What is abuse, and what is NOT abuse, **@steemitblog?** Indeed, what is merely *differences of opinion,* and what is actually *abusive practice?*

**1. Code vs Community:** In the 3+ years I have been here, this has often been discussed. What is ***avoided*** is the discussion of what the *end result* of a venue guided entirely by code would look like? And what what one guided primarily *by community* would look like? More specifically, we need to ask the question ***"what best serves the long-term objective of Steem THRIVING as a venue/blockchain?"***

**2. Using CODE to remove ambiguity:** A seemingly *unpopular* choice to address the BidBot/purchased vote question is very simple: ***Call things what they are.*** Make it perfectly acceptable for people to "buy" as many votes as they wish, and to use bid bots to their hearts' content... and simply do what pretty much every other social venue does: If you artificially boost your content ***LABEL IT "PROMOTED CONTENT."*** You'll see this on twitter, Facebook, YouTube and most social sites. It's NOT rocket science. 

Of course, critics fear that then they'll come off as *"greedy"* rather than *"popular."* Is that important? That's *opinion,* not *reality.*

**3. Abuse takes many forms!** I have to respectfully disagree with **@mehta** that there's *no such thing* as abuse. Whereas your points are good and reasonable, you are entirely looking at abuse from the perspective of *"people being unhappy that others make too many rewards."*

But what about stealing other people's content — or even *identities* — to to profit from *their* work?

What about things like what I call *"The Downvote Mosquitoes"* which is that *swarm* of *thousands* of tiny accounts who use ONLY the initial 15SP delegation from Steemit, Inc. to cast *millions* of tiny downvotes, with the *express purpose* of discouraging new/smaller account from posting, because the *"organizer"* is angry ***AND SPECIFICALLY WANTS STEEM TO FAIL?***

**4. What's the OBJECTIVE?** It's nice that there's a discussion on *"abuse,"* but in order to decide, don't we first need to decide what the ***GREATER OBJECTIVE*** of Steem is? We deal with two (often opposing) forces here. On one side, we can say the objective is ***Increasing the value of the Steem token.*** That's a *long term* proposition. On the other side, many only care about ***How many rewards will I get from my next post?*** because their intention is to constantly power down and cash out once a week to buy pizza. That's a *short term* perspective... it may offer the *illusion* of value right *now,* but the constant selling *works against* long term appreciation.

How can we truly address *"abuse,"* till we have established what the *greater objective* is?