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Realistically speaking, Steemit is ALL a "giant experiment" as long as it is in Beta and not in full worldwide release. As such, nobody here has really been promised anything more than an "opportunity." So really, nobody here is "entitled" to any particular number of upvotes, or compensation. Taking an air of entitlement because a person has gotten used to getting $30 for their posts hardly makes sense... besides, it isn't a sustainable model, unless those posts are driving 10,000 new views (or something like that) to the site. I've been part of plenty of Beta (and some Alpha) projects... and sometimes (like this) things get royally effed up; that's just part of being an early adopter.

I'm entitled to the upvotes I earn. Flagging me (or anyone else) simply because someone else thought an upvote was "wrong" feels like an arbitrary tax on creativity.

As you alluded to in a comment above, we can't ignore the human factor. Half the time (or more) those "valuable" upvotes were cast by a bot that wouldn't know the difference between a hole in the ground and quality content... it simply establishes "content exists" and votes. That's the part that tends to bother me the most about this site...

I agree that upvote bots are not good for the Steemit ecosystem, but downvote bots are cancer.

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