funny I just wrote why I quit randowhale.

How do you feel about those of us whose self-upvote is worth all of a couple cents? I've started only upvoting myself when I see one of my posts isn't getting much traction after a few hours or a day or two. 

I kind of view upvoting as a show of love, and if nobody loves you then self love is the next best thing. Haha.

That is so true. I realised it yesterday, after doing the math, that most experienced users will not vote as their curration rewards will be lower. I've that there appeared also @gentlebot who encourages not to vote for yourself.

Upvote and resteemed

I get where you're at @liberosist, however a couple of points to consider.

1. Someone else other than the author, may have given a randowhale vote. I have given several randowhale votes to authors I feel have been missed.

2. A post that qualifies for Curie, will have an author whose vote is worth a couple of cents at best. Why should you punish someone for giving themselves such a tiny vote?

Thanks, I'm interested to hear your answers.

*[Cg](https://steemit.com/@cryptogee)*

very optimistic thoughts you have and the way you share these great words with us its vgood and motivating us alot to depend on the steemit community rather than buying votes , i dnt believe on buying votes either its on randowhale or through other ways, let the community decide to vote or not and buying votes itself shows that we have not a good quality content because we do not depend and think that community will vote it thats why we buy votes so it should stop and sholud focus on making community rather than making short cuts

I myself used randowhale in the beginning when I started on Steemit, I was new to this whole thing and then I stopped using it. This was not how I wanted to get my upvotes! Also I stopped upvoting my own posts yesterday, we had a similiar conversation about upvoting your own posts and comments... some are doing it on purpose some don't (upvoting own post ). When you are new to posting on steemit, you maybe don't even notice it in the corner down below your post, it is ticked from the beginning and I didn't even notice it for long...Great post!  :)

Until only just recently, I realised I could get more value by giving another post a 100% upvote instead of my own. 

I have previously used randowhale, and tried to use the booster account in the past, but these do nothing other than a roll of the dice, send some sbd someone else's way in exchange for a vote. 

I will now go and give authors I like a manual 100% upvote, and leave my own post un-upvoted until my followers have gotten a chance to get in (my prior activity reflects a time when I had no idea what I was doing) - I've only been active on steemit for just over 2 months and am still very much learning the ropes. 

Better to give, than to recieve. Giving an upvote feels much nicer than giving yourself one. It feels dirty, after the initial "What do you mean, I can give myself money?" wears off. That phase took me about a week. Now that I have more SP, I feel more responsible.

I didn't know  you can buy vote, I recently started  and discovered facebook  steemit groups , to be honest I was really sick of people doing voteforvote or begging for vote. of course I want votes as well and since I spend so much time creating great good contents, I am not really  keen on thoses voteforvote and hopefully  in near future, I will have royal readers who will always come back to check my profile out. because it's a bit hard when you are new,  to even have a few readers. but I will say.. be patient . Good things take time :)

I didnt realise self upvoting a post was frowned upon. I think it automatically does it whenever I post. I'll have to have a look at my setting....

I just realized this fact about buying vote. I will consider to stop buying vote on my future post.
But I just doubt whether self-voting may not that guilty, by mean of supporting something written by myself. Just personal opinion.

Interesting article. I have only been 'tempted' by the randowhale once. I would rather the community takes a look at my posts and determines whether they are worth an upvote or not. 
I also only recently, realised that I could turn off the automatic self upvote. Even though my vote is only a few cents, I do like to see whether the community finds my worth worthwhile! Thanks for the post.

I really respect what you are doing for the platform so please dont misunderstand me when I say this, would these service's not do more to create value than to take it away since they give those with steem power other avenues of marketing their reputation, it's in a sense no different from delegation? or am I missing something?

@liberosist, I had never used randowhale for my first 11 out of my total 12 posts. 

Then I saw everyone is doing that. Not only minnows but very successful bloggers whose blogs are trending too were using randowhale. I felt that should be quite alright to use randowhale services and I did it for the first time in my last blog. Not that it helped much.

If voting bot is unethical why don't someone shut it down? Newbies don't know the rules here. We just follow the main stream. We tend to believe that that's the right way to do it. In fact the automatic self voting on the blog should be removed too. It seems funny when the blog is posted it already comes with the author's upvote. Why don't they simply remove that check box?. Why keep something that corrupts the mind?.

Any way I am here since a fortnight now. Guess learnt a bit here n there and I agree with your ethics point

Going forward, I will uncheck my self voting on the post and stay away from the voting bots. If my blog is any good, it will speak for themselves. But getting visibility is the single most difficult thing here. There could be 50-100 blogs posted every minute. That is more than 1 per second. So it will be like finding a needle in the haystack to get noticed. 

I believe as the no. of new people joining steemit increases (thousands joining daily), newbies will find it more and more challenging to find a voice of their own and a place of their own here. It's much easier to get recognized amongst say 5000 bloggers.  But it takes much effort to get standout amongst say 2,50,000 bloggers. And the count is increasing by the day.

But that's the fun part of it. The challenge makes it more exciting too. 


Let's see how things pan out to newbies like me in future 😊

Thanks for sharing this.. I also enjoyed reading through your rant. To be honest I hadn't really considered the long term effects of using randowhale, feeling quite sheepish now!

Thanks for advice :)

Yeah, that's why I mostly use randowhale (now booster also lol) on post's 5-6 day

With the advent of vote buying, the community started to sway away from its core. I dont think steemit is built to be this way. We can avoid this if the whales will start to recheck their bots and give chance to other users. There are far more powerful whales than these vote sellers, unless they are the ones who are selling votes, then we can do nothing about it.

I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that I don't self up vote. Myself, like many other smaller accounts have the tab clicked on my, "Submit a Story" page. I have never felt wrong about self up voting my own content, as I feel that my content is worth value. I do not post crap, although I have rushed a few posts out in my start on Steemit, to catch some nightly rewards. After reading this post, I still don't feel up voting my posts is wrong, and I will most likely still do it, but I do agree that when I self up vote I take away from what Steemit values my post at. Even though my 100% vote is worth just over a dollar it still effects the outcome and may sway others to vote in the beginning. I am going to not self up vote my posts this week and see how it goes. The main reason I want to do this is not to give myself less but be able to give others more because I know through giving I will receive. That may be the wrong way to look at it, but in this community, it's how it seems to work. Thanks for sparking an idea👍

Well done post You deserve for getting Upvote from me. I appreciate on it and like it so much . Waiting for your latest post. Keep your good work and steeming on. Let's walk to my blog. I have a latest post. Your upvote is high motivation for me. Almost all Steemians do their best on this site. Keep steeming and earning.

This is a good read. I was always thought that the randowhale was a steemit creation, as the account seems to have been given a large voting power. 

I guess long run if we all upvote our own content (I have been doing it and given it to anyone who comments on my posts) then this place will get pretty toxic and in turn hurt the value of Steem.

I think you have changed my view on it all now...

I automatically upvote my own posts. Is that what you mean with upvoting your post?

Voting for oneself seems to be a minor issue regarding distribution of rewards. Why not remove self voting? What would be the correct percentage to vote on oneself if one was a minnow, dolphin, or whale? https://red0dust.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/image8-e1499081086476.jpg

Well said

Doesn't it automatically up vote your post when you publish it?  Or does everyone use 100% steem power as rewards, instead of 50/50?

I use randowhale because I am tired of working for hours on a post and getting $1.15 and 12 views while the 500th post on fidget spinners gets $377.45 and 900 views. I think the criticism could be more properly directed.

I think an article which dissects the ethics and practices of @randowhale and @booster would be of interest.  It's a bit like the difference between the drug user and the drug dealer.  The law considers that the dealer is more "culpable" that the user.  I'm not saying that buying votes is illegal or unethical, just drawing a parallel between supplier and user!  I hasten to add that I have used both on occasion in order to boost visibility and potential payout of course.  ^_^

Good read. Having written my introduction post less than a day ago I can very much relate to what you're writing. It is both interesting, and frustrating, to see all the replies that are obviously just people desperate to get some easy votes here. As I want to engage with those who read my blog (as all good bloggers should in my opinion) it becomes exhaustive when you need to distinguish between those that are sincere, and those who don't really care but want your vote.

As I have written in my introduction post, I strongly believe that steemit, or a similar blockchain based platform, can have huge positive impact through incentivising more people to share quality content and educate others online. However, with the business model they are running it all depends on quality winning over noise and spam...

Anyways it is great if those of us who want to have a long term presence here, and believe in the value of enabling writers of quality content to have a great platfrom (which steemit can certainly be) ,  can mobilize to make sure that quality wins. In Norway we have a word called ["dugnad"](https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dugnad) , which refers to the community coming together once in a while to clean up and refurbish the neighbourhood to the benefit of all who lives there.

Perhaps a little bit of Norwegian "dugnad"-spirit is what we need to keep steemit nice and fruitful as well? :)

Man, I've been treating this like reddit. I just comment and upvote everything I like. Fuggit, thst's just how I do.