Commentary: Ethics and Growing on Steemit — The Delicate Issue of the Self-Upvote

It's funny how "internal politics" can become ingrained in a community.

Here in the Steemit community, one of the more controversial issues that has been a "hot button topic" pretty much since day one is the "self-upvote."

The "Vision" of Steemit?

Many early posts on Steemit talked about this being a "gift economy," centered around the "Pay It Forward" philosophy. Even now, I would have to say that the element of "giving" remains fairly strong, at the foundations of Steemit.

The idea, here, being that we reward quality content (or, at the very least, content we LIKE) with our upvotes. 

Of course, if you have built (or invested in) any significant level of Steem Power, you are able to hand out some fairly significant rewards to people. 

However, that also leaves the temptation open to "pay yourself" instead.

And so, we come face-to-face with the controversial self-upvote. Should we do it? Should we not? Is it even controversial?

User Interface Design, and More...

From my perspective, there was always something slightly ironic — or maybe "paradoxical" is a better word — about a site claiming to have its roots in "pay it forward" and at the same time there was a default setting that would "upvote" every post Steemians submitted... unless we unchecked the box. 

Recently, the input box for posting changed and that feature has been removed — now you have to manually choose to upvote your own post, once you've posted.

Although always a bit of a controversial "hot potato," the self-upvote mostly slipped under the radar (with a few occasional flare-ups) as the price of Steem declined and hung out in the 7-10c "doldrums" during early to mid 2007. But the debate quickly flared up again when the price of Steem rose to above $1.00 and some people were suddenly able to give themselves very large upvotes. As in, hundreds of dollars.

Can they DO that?

Different Schools of Thought

Perhaps nothing much would have happened with this debate, except for the fact that some started to take advantage of the situation by using ALL their voting power to reward their own meaningless comments.

So different lines in the sand were drawn.

Some (we might call them "purists") insisted that any form of voting for yourself was "bad form," no matter how much you might be tempted. This is a pay it forward community, and we should just stick to that... and self-upvoters should be shunned.

Others took a slightly more functional/realistic attitude and determined it was OK to just let the automatically checked "Upvote?" checkbox stay checked, but that upvoting your own comments was "bad form." Variations — for those who posted multiple times a day — were that you only upvoted ONE post of your own, per day.

And, of course, there were those who insisted "We're here to make MONEY, and we are going to do that by whatever means the system allows!"

(As a matter of disclosure, Red Dragonfly does NOT self-upvote)

It All Depends on Your Approach!

This whole debate — and why I even considered it worthy of a post — offers us an interesting insight into the variations of human nature.

As feelings were hurt, people got angry, flags flew and the debate raged, certain divisions became very apparent.

On one hand, we have "Content Creators" whose primary objective in coming to Steemit is — obviously — to create content. Red Dragonfly is among them. Naturally, we are delighted that there are rewards (let's not overlook that!), but the rewards are not our driving reason for being here. We're here for the publishing opportunity, and to support and promote art.

On the other hand, we have "Investors/Money Seekers," whose primary objective is to make as much money as possible. The "content creation" part is simply the vehicle that gets you to the money. Odds are that if the objective was "play tic-tac-toe" rather than create content, they would care very little... they would just play tic-tac-toe 24/7.

But these two are really not "pure" divisions. 

Although there's substantial overlap, it also tend to hold true that Steemit is home to "short term thinkers" and "long term thinkers."

The former are primarily oriented towards maximizing income in the short term. The latter are more concerned with maximizing value in the long run. 

Ethics and Functional Implications

So IS there really an ethical dilemma here? Or are we simply looking at different functional approaches? And what are their implications?

Seems to me that a lot of that hinges on what we believe to be true, and how we serve our objectives.

Ask the average person on Steemit — regardless of their time frame or strategy — whether they want the community and the Steem token to "do well," odds are you are going to collect 99+% "yes" statements.

But can we agree on what's "good" for the community?

As someone from the "Content Creator/Long Term" camp, I see potential problems ahead of we are not — as a community — good stewards of this "Goose that Lays Golden Eggs."

I think we can agree that we all would like to get rewards, but personally, I'd like to still be here in another five years, still getting rewards. If we "drain the pool" (as some critics claim the money-focused camp are doing), there might not be anything here to "drain" in a few years... in which case everybody loses. 

But the Blockchain is Forever... isn't it?

I think there's a lot of misunderstanding surrounding what "the blockchain" is and does.

Whereas we might say the blockchain is "forever," it's really not "a thing," in and of itself. It only becomes "a thing" insofar as we pass information to it... like the content of a social site like our community.

We might not be able to "screw up" the blockchain, but we can certainly screw up the community. And in doing that, there may not be "a company" to fail, but the collapse of the Steemit social site — due to spam, scams, abuse, so-called "reward pool rape," upvote bots, self upvoting and other issues — might well result in us all going from having $4.00 Steem to holding a bunch of Steem that's worth less than Dogecoin, God forbid!

Communities take time to build, but the stronger you make the community bonds — which generally suggests people caring about others, as well as themselves — the greater the chance the community will grow and prosper, in the long run.

Frankly, I like the idea of the blockchain being "forever," but I like that idea to be accompanied by the steady growth of this community, in the long run.

So when you consider giving yourself — rather than someone else — that vote, stop ask yourself if your action today will prevent you from still benefiting at this time next year. Or in 2025...

Thank you for reading! Red Dragonfly is a proud member of the @sndbox creative initiative.

The Red Dragonfly is an independent alternative art gallery located in Port Townsend, WA; showcasing edgy and unique contemporary art & handmade crafts by local and worldwide artists. All images are our own, unless otherwise credited. Where applicable, artist images used with permission.