You are right. There are better ways to encourage the change in a behaviour than to punish the bottom end users.
I think minnowbooster's whitelist is actually a really good idea (reviewing accounts before use of service) and would somewhat justify the profits being made.... since, as you said. The whales make their profits when the price of steem goes up. BUT I think it would be best if the whitelist feature was put in place for any and every user of the upvote service. So that spammers/scammers couldn't even get their feet in the door.
I am trying to volunteer to fight spam and abuse here. And to be honest, from my experience, and everything I have heard from @steemcleaners, the abuse is rampant and out of control.
I wish bernie and others would delegate huge amounts of steem to those willing to fight the spam. It wouldn't have to be for a long period of time. I think a huge push of 5 or 10 million SP delegations, against spam, would only need to last 2 weeks. Or 1 month at most. Afterwhich most spammers would have taken their profits and left. Then only 1 million or 2 of SP for policing would be needed. But anyway... now I am hijacking your Post a bit. Sorry
Thanks for speaking up and having the conversations. For the sake of Steemit...I hope someone is listening!
Please, hijack away!
Intelligent discourse is not something I would consider highjacking a post. I've seen a lot of good ideas in the post and the comments here. It's not easy getting the attention you may deserve here on steemit even with one quality post after another.
I'm still struggling and have invested both money time and spend hours every day telling people about steemit and crypto in my Uber. I even have business cards printed with my steemit on them that I give to every rider. Sometimes it's really hard to put in that 4 hours of research on a post that gets 5 eyeballs on it.
SMH
Thank you for that feedback! I was mostly apologizing for the final paragraph, since I did start to veer off topic. But yes, it was organic, so, not a real hijack! I appreciate the feedback and encouragment @libertyranger !!
thanks XD