@kevinwong, thanks for the good post.
@donkeypong, thanks for the good comment.

When I just joined Steemit a few months ago, I was surprised that self-voting was denounced by everybody, but there is no voice to denounce vote-selling. Self-voting gets half SP and half SBD. Vote selling gets all SBD (all cash) and can get curation. I was always wondering why vote-selling is tolerated by all the whales, and on the other hand self-voting is a shame.

However, sometimes, minnows need to buy votes, because they don't have other choice:

1. When I just joined Steemit, nobody knew me and I knew nobody. I have to pay the bot to up vote me for visibilities and increase reputation. I believe I did not get financial gain by buying the votes. My only gain is that my reputation increased a little from the votes.

2. When I [detected firepower, a reputation 69 user, was using a bot to sent out more than 300 comments in a single day to spam Steemit](https://steemit.com/steemit/@nationalpark/observation-and-analysis-firepower-of-spamming), I wrote an article to reveal it. Then, **[firepower, the spammer, came to curse me, threaten me, and down vote me](https://steemit.com/steemit/@nationalpark/observation-and-analysis-the-dark-hand-of-steemit-steemit)**. He even banned my steemit.chat account. For some reasons that I don't know, you guys also came to down vote me. Fortunately, both of you removed the down votes within hours. However, firepower and his bot s4s down voted me very hard. I have no powerful friend to seek help. **In order to make my articles visible, I have to buy the up votes, no other choice**. I paid more than $45 to buy the up votes to make my articles visible. Its my only weapon to fight a powerful spammer and abuser.


Steemit.chat, the channel for appeal, is controlled by firepower, a spammer and abuser. He wants to be the dictator and censor steemit. Can anybody help me to bring this issue to SteemFest? Thanks

I commend Kevin and yourself for making the concerted effort to reward quality content especially from newer people.  For those with strong voting power, I will state it is greatly appreciated.  And isnt that the solution to eliminating the need to buy voting power.

Personally, I have not done it nor will I.  I can understand those that do and why they do it.  However, if those with the VP voted for quality content, which is posted on here daily, wouldnt minnow turn into bigger fish at a much quicker pace?

I really have no problem with those who upvote their own posts.  If one is looking for quality content, cant one find it in his/her own creation.  I am sure most feel their stuff is quality.  

Ultimately, I dont think anything will stop it.  People engage in behavior that is self serving for the most part.  People will buy votes simply because it helps them out.  It is no different from the posts we see about the whales simply upvoting each other (which isnt completely true but that is another story)....why shouldnt they?  If it serves them to "circle" vote, why shouldnt they?

Like you said, it's pretty hard to tell and so we shall see where it leads us.

> I would much rather see good content get curated and rewarded for its merits rather than votes being sold and rented to anyone, but everyone deserves a chance and not everyone has been getting it, absent those services. So they do fill a need.

@donkeypong This resonates hugely with me.  And honestly, In my humble opinion, nothing compares with GOOD curation by the community. The reality of selling votes is that it has zero effect on rewarding good content.  Anyone who can pay, can get a vote...and so many people do it, that it raises the water level of what it takes to "get noticed" anyway.  

> And in the end, I don't know what effect all of this has on the content, but as long as people are engaged and participating and attracting others, then we'll see where it goes.

I totally appreciate your honesty here. The most salient question for me is what type of Steemit Ecosystem sets us up for becoming Respected, Desired, and Notable in the 'real world'.  If our ecosystem is flooded with cheap, transitive, and barely above spamming quality interactions and posts, that is super obvious to people.  

If we can influence the system to heavily encourage QUALITY over MANIPULATION, that is also super obvious to anyone looking in.  I want a Steemit that when a totally random person comes across online, they're like, **HOLY FUCK**, those people are doing something amazing.  

Appearances are everything.  Currently I think many people look at the site, and it looks somewhat akin to a freaky cult built around sucking up to each other.  

Anyway, I'm really glad you're discussing the subject, I believe it to be of utmost importance to the future of the platform.

Also I totally agree with you here....

> We need to reward people (at an appropriate level) for short form posts, links, memes, photos, videos, music, comments, and other activities and participation, not just long writing. Hopefully, we find those organically.

And might like to add, that ultimately finding ways to reward people that encourages them to offer wild, insightful, and very honest, or at least creative interactions is going to be key.  I think the KIND of interactions people offer is huge...and for new folks seeing massive amounts of bot spam all over the place seems like a pretty clear detriment to all of us.

Yup agreeable that vote buying services can be put to good use. We should be free to trade as long as there's mutual consent. It's just that it can equally be abused, affecting the network. So I guess vote service providers just have to make sure its a net positive for the platform. Thinking about it now, I wonder if vote services should leave comments for every post. It looks spammy but on hindsight, it does provide notice for the rest of the community that a post has used said service, so users can determine if its abusive in nature or not. Maybe theres a better way to do this though. Also I've been thinking about the economics of vote services that offer significant short term returns, above the service fee which doesnt seem to make sense. Being riskless on that front just means that the risk has been pushed onto the rest of the network. Or maybe if everybody starts using them by default, the returns vs fee will reach an equilibrium and starts to be riskier for any users getting less tham what they paid for.

Hello @donkeypong,

After reading through what you and @kevinwong's take on vote buying and renting, I wanted to share my experience and thoughts as well regarding this somewhat taboo topic. I used to buy votes occasionally when I felt that I wasn't being noticed myself. This quickly became a habit of buying them after posting, and I have since then (about a week) refuse to press any button that gives me votes, bought or not as I feel that this behavior would harm my account's credibility in the long run.  

When talking about the "tribalistic support-for-support mentality", a lot of newer users including myself, have limited options outside of banding together with a circle that looks out for one another's content. However, when pulling back to see the whole picture, how often are these friends even reading, rather than for the sake of voting you because your article was good? 

One thing that lead to my frustrations on Steemit, was how long I would work on some articles, for no one to read, nonetheless vote, and these paid services evened the playing field just a little bit, giving newer authors a chance to be seen higher on the list for their category. 

One thing I really liked about your comment @donkeypong, was that I also agree that not every "great post" has to be the length of a book, along with barring myself from paid voting bots, I also have begun the process of varying the length of my own posts. Not every follower is going to read above 2000 word, hanging on every sentence, and at times, shorter pieces can also leave lasting impacts. 

As far as giving out my power to someone else's vote, I currently have most of my sp delegated out for curation and spam fighting initiatives. I may not be able to make a difference with the few hundred SP I was using, but I know that others do, and can hopefully make positive dents in Steemit's eco system. Thank you for this enjoyable read guys.

Mahalo,
@shello