Are you in favor of New Steem?

http://andybowers.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/no-bot.jpgs

As most know the Steem price has tanked drastically and one of the reactions to that is the new movement called #newsteem.

This new group is comprised of whales (those who hold allot of Steem Power) and their followers. The basic idea of #newsteem is bidbot usage is bad, if you use them and get "caught" doing so downvotes will plague your topic.

Those downvotes will likely come from (among others) @ocdb and @ocb and the trail of downvote followers linked to each account.

They use the reasoning that good content will find its real value on its own. They view bid bot use as stealing from the rewards pool and they aim to put those "stolen" funds back where they believe it belongs (back in the rewards pool).

Some of the reasoning they use to tell these downvoted users is that you can't get ROI on advertised content anywhere else so why do you expect to do it with STEEM and other comments that follow similar logic.

The faulty With Their Logic & Actions

They are combating abuse with more abuse which is never a good idea. The reasoning they use for the downvotes conflict their own actions (more on that later).

Some (like me) think there's a difference between bot abuse and bot use. For example a clear case of bot use would be a Steemian finds an article that he likes but with the STEEM price so low their upvote isn't worth much and they would like to contribute to the article with a larger upvote.

The only way for them to do so would be sending a bot that awards a higher upvote then their own can give, so they do so. Under the rules of #newsteem that article now has the risk of getting downvoted because a Steemian that seen value in its content sent what they deemed as an appropriate sized upvote to contribute to the content creators rewards.

As noted, "you can't get ROI on advertised content anywhere else so why do you expect to do it with STEEM ", is one of the lines #newsteem likes to use when explaining downvotes to their victims. Sure the line sounds nice but too bad its a blatant lie. I have done affiliate work for many years and you absolutely can get ROI on advertised content.

You also can advertise for free on many other platforms. For example, I can create a Reddit account at this very moment and begin advertising any product that I want and it wouldn't cost me a dime. Anything that I may earn doing this would be 100% positive ROI.

Rewarding Themselves For Fighting Abuse

Lets get back to the statement I made earlier, "The reasoning they use for the downvotes conflict their own actions". As noted #newsteem aims to put stolen rewards back in the Rewards pool but did you know they are profiting from reporting abuse?

I see no reason why this should be the case. If you are following the #newsteem movement then do so without having rewards being given to you for doing so. If protecting the rewards pool is the goal then protect and stop taking from it, fighting abuse should be its own reward.

Example: @downvoter

Downvoter is a Steem account that has been created this month (October/2019) and it looks like its main (possibly only) function is hunting down any topic that has a bid bot used on it.

While I have no issue with someone wanting to spend their time hunting down and fighting against something they think is wrong the problem with this account is that its flagging every bot used topic it comes across (Including bot use, not bot abuse topics). Its not an authors fault if they created content that was good enough that someone else deemed it worthy of an upvote. Stop downvoting such topics as it underminds what could be an otherwise decent movement that is #newsteem.

The other issue I see with this account (and others) that are following #newsteem is the automatic upvotes their spam comments get. Just take a look at @downvoter's comment section and you will see that every single one of his spam comments has 3/4 upvotes coming from the same Steemian accounts.

This is blatant abuse and is taking from the rewards pool (something that #newsteem claims to be fighting). Downvoter isn't the only Steemian that follows #newsteem that does this. I don't wish to point fingers at anyone but since the account downvoter was only created this month and for what looks like the sole purpose of spaming and abusing I thought I would use it as an example.

Example of #newsteem (@downvoter) flagging posts that the auther hasn't used a bot on.

@maneco64 topic Shanghai Physical Gold Market in the Ascendancy that has a 14 minute video posted in it received a bot upvote from @tipu from one of his readers. @downvoter proceeds to spam and flag this Steemians topic while simultaneously getting rewards for his (@downvoters) own spammy comment.

Even the tiniest of upvotes aren't safe. @agrostis sent a minnowbooster upvote to a topic, (NESTBOX CAM UPDATE), created by the Steemian @mikenevitt. This topic has $0.14 of rewards on it and it got flagged.

Here's a crazy thought, if you want to put rewards back in the rewards pool so badly that you are flagging $0.14 topics then how about you deny payment for your spammy replies you leave in everyones topic @downvoter. That would put allot more then $0.14 back in the rewards pool.

Some of these users don't even have a clue how to use a bot but yet they are being downvoted because one of their readers deemed the contents of the topic they just read worthy of a bigger upvote than they themselves can apply. #newsteem could have been a great movement with just about everyone on board but its the abuse like the above that is not limited to the @downvoter account that has some against the implementation of the movement.

With all that in mind, if you so dare answer, I leave you with the question, Are you in favor of New Steem?

Dpoll doesn't allow me to vote on my own poll but for transparency my vote is for option 3. If any of the Steemians I used as an example for wrongfully getting flagged would like their topic and/or names removed from this topic please let me know and I will do so ASAP.

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No (55.0%) 11 / 20 Yes BUT not how it currently is being implemented (35.0%) 7 / 20 Yes (10.0%) 2 / 20