Some days back, one of my vegan friends told me that he is reluctant to use auto-voting services as they may upvote a meat-eater's post too. This is a very logical and ethical question which every vegan faces at some moment on Steem platform.

Vegans can't spare a penny for non-vegan products

Vegans have a clear stand on not supporting any businesses with their money, that promote or are involved in any form of animal cruelty. The simple logic behind this is that our consumption is responsible for the generation of demand in the market. If we pay our money to buy any animal product, we are directly contributing in the violence against innocent beings. Vegans would also not like to promote any content that either glorifies the use of animal products or consider it as normal.

Personally, I’m also a firm believer in this demand-supply principle and would discourage every penny contributing to the demand of animal products. Some years back, when my friend @chetanpadliya turned vegan, he had some of his funds invested in the stock market. So, he asked me if it’s okay to put invested in a footwear company that sells leather shoes. I told him that it contradicts our ethics, as being a share-holder of a footwear company means we co-own the business and we are directly funding its activities. So, he immediately sold out all those stocks.

Steeming is not vegan-friendly

Last year, when I joined Steemit, it was difficult to even surf stuff here. The content here was full of non-vegan recipes and activities. Whether you are reading posts on Steem or chatting on Steemit.chat or Discord, non-vegan stuff was taken as very normal everywhere. At times, it was very depressing to browse such content on a regular basis. There were very few vegans on the platform. No one ever used to voice their opinion against the stuff glorifying non-vegan activities.

The eco-system here was built in such a way that everyone was appreciating everyone else’s stuff to get some easy upvotes. But I couldn’t bear some content and I was fairly straight in expressing my displeasure over those contents. No need to say that I lost many friends here due to my straight forward approach. But with time, I also created many friendly relationships. But whenever they posted some non-vegan stuff, I refused to upvote them and stated my displeasure over that content. Some understanding people weren’t too offended with that and continued the relationship.

Since the beginning, I presumed that I was not going to get any whale votes due to my aggressive stand against non-vegan content. Most whales were and are non-vegan here. So it was easy for me to not to expect any upvotes and hence I was never disappointed with this fact. Whatever upvotes and appreciations I received were very unexpected and always pleased me. But several people join and post here to get fat whale votes. So they don’t have any liberty to upset them.

The dilemma of using auto-upvoting bots

Then, the advent of auto-voting bots spoiled the game a bit more. Many people engaged with these bots to put several content creators on their auto-voting. Once I saw my vegetarian friend’s vote on a non-veg recipe. I asked her, how could she upvote that. She answered that she don’t even read those type of shit posts but had put that author on her auto-upvote bot. So her vote appears on such posts.

With time, it became a trend. I too put several people on auto-upvote list, engaged in vote-exchange bots, delegated my SP to several communities and bots. Thus my votes went everywhere without me being aware of the content being upvoted.

So when my friend @fruitdaddy brought in the question of ethics, I told that upvotes does not imply that I like that content. However I wasn’t sure of what I was saying. Probably, I was just defending my stand here.

Business of upvoting is different than ethics

To clarify, let me put it this way. All my auto-upvotes are actually traded off in return to some upvotes and/or SBD irrespective of the content being upvoted. So in effect, content has nothing to do with my votes. If I had delegated my SP to any bid-bot or was using a vote-selling platform, all my votes were being sold in return of SBDs. In other cases too, whenever I’m upvoting using some auto-upvoter, my votes are actually sold in return for votes because I generally auto-upvote under terms and conditions agreed upon for exchange of upvotes. And I don’t auto-upvote any of my friends or the content creators, I may really like to support. All my non-contractual upvotes are cast manually. So I know whom I'm upvoting when doing it manually.

At the moment, Steeming has reached to such a point where the business of upvoting has hardly anything to do with the content or quality. It's not "Proof of Brain" that motivates me to upvote but "Proof of Short-term Profit". And this applies to majority of the accounts here. The "Proof of Brain" is only true at conceptual level but in practice, it is not applied at individual post level. However many bots are doing their own diligence for upvoting quality content through preparing their own whitelists and blacklists.

Create NSFV Settings like NSFW

To overcome the emotional assault on ethical vegans arriving on Steem platform, I would like to suggest a tag like NSFW (Not Safe For Work). Just like NSFW tag, there should be a NSWV tag i.e. Not Safe For Vegans.

NSFV preference option should be made available in Settings panel. Just like NSFW, there should be an option to hide NSFV content for vegans according to their preference settings. Some bots can choose not to upvote NSWV content just like they do with NSFW content.

This would solve the ethical dilemma of many vegans and would make browsing on Steem comfortable. They will also have a choice of bots to engage with that do not upvote NSFV tag. Wouldn't it be the most practical solution to make this Steem platform more welcoming to vegan community?

• Is there any witness, who will support classifying or categorizing content as NSFV?
  If so, vegan community will love to vote you up as their witness. At least, I can assure my vote for sure 😊.

• Is there any developer, who can design their platform to include this feature?

• Can existing platform like Steemit and Busy would be willing to add such a feature?

• If such a feature is created, would any community bot or plagiarism & spam detection bot like to ensure the compliance of NSFV tag by everyone here?

I would like to hear thoughts from vegans as well as non-vegans on this issue.
Thanks for all your attention!