Im at the end of my first week on Steemit. I've read some great posts, seen some interesting stuff, and I'm looking forward to learning more and developing a better understanding of how the platform works.
As a new user, its clearly going to take time to build any kind of following, even if what you're posting is interesting and relevant for lots of users on the platform (my paltry earning so far suggests this could take a while!). But I've noticed a practice going on to boost new accounts that, on the face of it, seems pretty dubious.
I've been following a particular sports account for the past week or so. They are also fairly new on Steemit, having joined last month, and post a couple of times a day. Despite having few followers and also being relatively new, I was impressed to see their posts were regularly getting heavily upvoted, garnering around $30 on average.
But a closer look at their transaction history indicates they're buying votes fairly heavily. I read a great article about this earlier by @liberosist.
As a new user, this is immediately off-putting. Is this how people get ahead, get noticed, on Steemit? Everybody wants to maximise the number of people who read their work, that's natural and nothing to discourage, but is this practice sustainable? Or good for the quality of the platform?
At this point, pretty much all users are probably going to be considered early adopters, and anyone coming onto the platform primarily to make money is going to be tempted by these services and having that early mover advantage. But resisting this trend of vote-buying is going to be important for attracting people to Steemit who aren't solely motivated by making a quick buck. Steemit should strive to a meritocracy- users will be far better served this way.
What people don't need is another social network where they are served paid content.