piotr, given the courtesy of this comment, I feel I must take the time to respond. The main reason I downvoted your post is because it was trending primarily as a result of paid bot services. I felt the post was over-rewarded. It was not personal and certainly not part of any flag war. I do what I do for my own reasons and I am not colluding with anyone.
I want the best for steemit and steem. If you examine my interactions with the Steem blockchain, hopefully you would conclude the same.
I'm sorry to say that Steem/Steemit are not doing as well as they could be. I hope that changes and I'm doing my part to try to highlight the issues.
I wish you well.
Dear @benjojo
I appreciate your comment. I've realized a while ago that whenever Im arguing online with other people - I always fail. I see other people doing it and failing.
I learned to swallow my pride and instead of realising my anger Im doing my best to understand reasons that are behind other people actions.
"The main reason I downvoted your post is because it was trending primarily as a result of paid bot services."
I understand. I was actually worried that it may happend. That once my post will be on trending page then it will be downvoted by some community members.
At the same time Im trying to learn steemit and Im also teaching several others people how to use this tool. So reaching trending page (even using bots) was a MUST at some stage. I needed to see what results can I achieve. I needed some answers. How many views will I get. Will there be extra engagement from new followers etc?
" I felt the post was over-rewarded. ".
I cannot argue with that reason as it's all our personal judgement.
The thing is that I still spent a bit more on bots than I received from them.
My goal was to benefit my curators. That's why I also decided not to self-upvote myself within 1st day and I also used bots only 1h after I published my post.
I've spent huge amount of hours building my followers base and I want them to benefit if they upvote my posts. What would you recommend? Perhaps I should use bots the way I do but with smaller amount of invested SBD? So I would not end up on trending page ?
I wish you well too.
ps. I noticed that you stopped creating content? are you ever planning to start again?
Yours,
Piotr
I wouldn't use paid bot services at all which are, in my opinion, very bad for steem/steemit. There are other ways to gain visibility, rewards and followers. The steem inflation is not there to reward your followers out of hand.
I support those who choose not to self-vote very much.
I'm glad you understand why I flagged your post. It's not always easy to see another's point of view. If it helps at all, the amount of actual rewards my flag removes is very very small due to my SP level. I flag what I can because I think it's important for people to see posts acquiring flags for certain reasons....there's so much to flag in trending lately.
I may post in the future but I don't have much time at the moment. Also, I would rather create content for a social media dapp that was less abusive, had a better token distribution and better custodianship.
I really appreciate you sharing your point of view. Im new here and I see your replies as a very valuable. Im sure you're not the only one out there with similar anti-bot policy and I need to take it into consideration while building my presence on Steemit. It's a good lesson after all.
I just think it would be good if you would inform people who get flagged of the reason why they are being flagged. Otherwise you may really make more harm than good. Because many of those flagged today will get their first lesson, that flagging is powerful weapon commonly used.
All the best
Piotr