As a part of Steemit community you should be prepared to accept upvotes

For the past few days, I've been people complaining quite much about upvotes on the platform, causing a lot of drama. It's common opinion that many people see some upvotes as abuse of someones high SP, but I have difficulties to see how people can't accept upvoting as a part of Steemit platform.

Steemit is a special social media platform. We have a special kind of free speech on the site, while still being able to fight scams and plagiarism by using the flagging system. The flagging system however is so much more than a tool to fight plagiarism, scamming, spamming etc.

Flagging can be used for multiple reasons, not only for those mentioned and most commonly used. It can be used when you disagree with someone regarding the topic/rewards/etc., you can flag someone for being annoying, for using bought votes or you can even flag someone because you think the earth is flat.

However as opposite to this, we have a wonderful tool called "upvoting". Not all of us are aware of this and just like we are able to flag anything we want, we are also allowed to upvote anything for any reason we like.

However this annoys some people. They call some upvotes abuse, mock someone for upvoting something they think is crap or for upvoting something with too little viewers or maybe even because someone upvotes a friend.

You all shoud accept upvotes as part of Steemit. You can of course complain for upvotes, but it only shows you do not truly accept Steemit as a platform. Anyone using their own money and power for something they want is acceptable.

The worst part is when someone blames an author for getting too many or too big upvotes! Like it would be the author making the decisions how much worth the posts are. It is a community effort, other people with power are the biggest thing determining the final payout of a post. It's not about the author. The author does not decide the payout, so he or she is not to be insulted for getting too big upvotes.

However this is happening. People are getting complaints for getting too big upvotes. Some are reacting with flagging, which is kind of understandable, but then people are attacking and blaming someone for getting too big upvotes. You can flag someone, but there is no reason to blame someone for getting upvoted "too much", because they very rarely are the ones upvoting themselves. We should all be able to accept other people are upvoting instead of complaining to the one who is receiving the upvotes.

Steemit is not a platform built only on flagging, as we should also recognize the other side of flags - the upvotes. Far too few users are bravely using this wonderful tool and are only either flagging other users without seeing the use of upvote tool - and some are only upvoting without thinking how upvotes could be used in a completely different way.

We all should be brave to upvote and accept we are upvoting content. Just like we are accepting the flags.

However I'm not saying we cannot discuss or even complain about upvotes if we don't agree with the reasons behind the upvotes. We all are free to discuss any topic we like. You can tell anyone personally why you are upvoting people or why you have upvoted them.

Being open and honest about upvotes is a good thing for the platform. No need to start upvote-wars for every upvote you receive, but you can take it instead as an constructing compliment.

_{All images from Pixabay}