But isn't that how Steemit is built (for good or for bad)? Anyone can come in, create an account, buy a $hit ton of STEEM on blocktrades, transfer it over, power up, and start off with a very high upvote? Steemit doesn't start everyone off on an even playing field. As to possibilities of where @ranchorelaxo came from:
Yes, maybe him and @haejin are colluding. However, @haejin's content is still good - it's not like it's crap and then rancho elevated crap.
@ranchorelaxo is some random person who has a lot of money and is getting into crypto (and STEEM) as an investment. He came upon @haejin's stuff and found it useful and either doesn't like anything else on the site or isn't interested in anything else. I know for a fact that there is at least one financial/investing newsletter that is pushing STEEM as a good investment (it's how I ended up here), and they SPECIFICALLY said to invest in SP as a long-term investment. It's not implausible that others much wealthier than I am heeded that call as well and came to steemit, and it explains why they would be interested in @haejin's posts, but not that much else. Their interest may or may not be in building the steemit community or in producing content. I myself started that way (put in money and leave it), but then decided that the steemit community itself was interesting.
Or 3. Rancho got rich off of haejin's advice and wanted to repay him.
It could all be innocent. So why not address it? Say that. Realize though, that his actions could be a detriment to the platform overall. I wonder how long he would have continued to reward haejin had the community not said anything? He (I use 'he' for simplicity, could be any other entity) seems to be able to read and speak English. Why not just address it publicly?
But why would he/she have to? That's literally the opposite of innocent until proven guilty. The rules of steemit isn't, hey, join this community but also you are obligated to defend yourself from any and all attacks and explain all your votes and content to the satisfaction of everyone. That's...super restrictive and controlling. Not to mention like I said, there are probably users on here who are just for the "buy and hold in case this because the next Facebook in 5 years" and care very little about interacting with steemit beyond that. If that's true, why should they be dragged out and accused and forced to interact?
Who cares? Why shouldn't he? It's his upvote. He literally paid into this platform, and steemit rewards him for that.
I think people came to steemit with an idea of a very fair, even playing ground and 100% meritocracy. But that is simply not true - you can buy steem, you can buy SP, and the platform rewards you for that. I'm not saying if it's good or bad, but I'm just saying that's literally how steemit is built.
Yes. But just as steemit allows him the ability to direct the rewards pool, it allows others to do the same. Why would you support his exercise of that use and not that of other smaller users to do the same?
I mean, honestly? Because the smaller users aren't offering me any value. Not saying they don't have value, they just don't offer me any value. There's no reason for me to upvote people for the sole reason that they're smaller users. If I think their comments or posts are informative/funny/etc., sure. But haejin brings me a lot of value, which is why I upvote a lot of his posts.
If other people find value in other users and want to upvote them, awesome. No one against berniesanders is against his ability to upvote people. They're upset about the flagging/downvote attacks against haejin and anyone else who stands up for haejin or criticizes berniesanders, many of which aren't whales and are much "lower" on the totem pole. Just today I saw speakyourmind downvote someone into oblivion on haejin's post for doing just that and then repeatedly taunt him by saying that he/she could do this all day "this is just one of my accounts." That kinda of bullying is what people are upset about.
Honestly, at this point I'm not sure what your argument is about. You started off arguing about haejin taking too many votes, then talking about how people should attack rancho instead, and then now you're asking why I don't support people upvoting. Those goalposts have moved mighty far from where we started.
I'm not asking you to upvote anybody. I'm asking why you don't support people downvoting Haejin to counteract a vote that they don't agree with.
The small users may be part of the reason you are aware of haejin, because they are responsible for his success...and that's all great. Before Rancho, steemit would be happy to consider haejin a success story. There were never any calls to downvoted him before. If he had the same earnings from different accounts, its doubtful that anybody would've said anything. Even if they had, they wouldn't be able to garner much support for it.
Also, Just like you Said, anyone can come with a shitload of money and flag the content they dont like.
So, where is the difference?
Everyone is seeing what berniesanders is trying to do.
No one heard from ranchorelaxo what he is trying to do.
maybe that is part of the problem that @ranchorelaxo needs to address.
the other part of the problem is that those who love seeing @haejin, or anyone else, upvoted by a whale need to be also willing to accept that a whale can also counter that vote. It's how the system works.
I've had comments downvoted on this issue. I support bernie countering the large votes. The main person downvoting my comments is screaming that bernie is being a bully while this guy's downvotes of my comments is in itself bullying and censorship.
One of them also told me that I apparently have a large mafia and an army of bots. Being honest and rationale is definitely not that moron's strong suit