Yo yo yo, Hope everyone is safe, full, and smiling.
I went ahead and consolidated from many of the more speculative coins around, into the most useful crypto I know of, Steem. I have officially became one of the top 1500 accounts according to Steem Power. I'm willing to bet, many of the accounts above me are alt accounts for the 20 - 30 people who have more than a million Steem Power. Knowing my Steem Power and my rank according to SP account holders, is kind of depressing. 60,000 people. With my relatively small amount of Steem I am among the 1500 largest accounts. Any upvotes larger than a dollar come from those 1500 accounts.
Firstly that just shows how much responsibility and pressure those people with large accounts have. 50,000+ people interacting on Steemit. With less than 5,000 people capable of rewarding content decently. Damn, just damn. That's a bit overwhelming for both sides. The wealth gap here on Steemit strongly resembles the wealth gap we see in the real world.
Secondly, that makes my position here that much more important. If I am among the top 5% here on Steemit, and I am afraid to downvote certain people who are stealing from the reward pool for the damage they are doing. That means there are very few people capable of doing it who have more Steem Power than me. That makes my upvoting and curating here that much more important. I need to better understand that even if its not for the right reasons, because of my Steem Power and my Rep I am a role model to some of the newer users no matter if I like it or not. I will try my best for the community, to be as good of role model as I can!
I came to Steem at one of the last good time, when buying coins was cheap enough. When there were few enough people that I could get some of that sweet, sweet attention in this attention economy we are in. Times are changing. I watched the birth of upvote bots on Steem, I watched the hardfork that drastically change the way votes were weighted and worked. The hardfork came and killed off bot voting armies, and replaced it with powerful paid voting bots. To me the bot armies were unfair as well, yet they are much more desirable to the system we have now. Where the users are delegating the Steem for a return on investment, to the voting bots that will eventually kill the platform once they get all the delegation.
I would like to evoke every cheesy U.S. political slogan over the last 20 years. Make Steemit Great Again, Hope, yes we can, change to believe in, Yes Steem can, building a bridge to the Steem blockchain, don't stop thinking about tomorrow.
In order to achieve this I am going to do these few things and I would ask that you join me.
I am adjusting my votes, speaking with my feet. I am removing votes for any witnesses that I am voting for, who are running the voting bots, or upvoting the bad content on the hot page.
I will not upvote the users who run bots, who use bots to upvote every post, or those spend more than 50% of their voting power on themselves.
If an upvote bot has upvoted something. Save your upvote for a post that is not advertisement. Because when someone uses an upvote bot on a post, that post becomes equal to the shit you would find on promoted. It becomes advertisement. If its a challenge or a worthy cause then maybe it is still worth an upvote, but this post should not be 400$. If you pay 350$ for upvote bots, you can turn anything into a piece of gold though.
remain vocal addressing these issues. Issues like my post addressed here, and like @krnel's post did here. As well as commenting on the people who are only voting themselves and seem to be happily ignoring the community like i did here.
These are things we can all do no matter how much Steem Power or followers we have. We need to move the discussion in the right direction and sway the minds (or pocketbooks) of those who abuse the system. Make them realize that helping the community to increase the price of every Steem they own, is more significant than squeezing Steem out in a way that is detrimental to quality content.
I am going to move my focus away from Haejin and abuse, Its up to the powerful people to deal with the powerful abusers. I am going to spend my time upvoting good content, trying to keep the quality posts here an coming. Interacting with the good people who are still here. Healing some of the people who take damage in the Steem Quest to make Haejin human.
Anyways! I'm off to pay 500$ to get this on the hot page with the other shit posts lol jk. Adios!
Woot woot,