A few of the big accounts on Steem have been using these downvotes to encourage manual curation to the point where most of the ex-bidbots are now supporting high quality authors who deserve recognition, rewards and exposure.
These ex-bots are giving #NewSteem and manual curation a chance
And you know what? It is working. Most Steem users who put effort, time and quality into their posts are getting votes on a consistent basis, maybe not in all of them and probably not as much as they would hope so, but since the bots are now allocating more than 15 Million Steem Power into manual curation - instead of using it to sell votes -, the situation and circumstances of the Steem Community and its users are definitely better than how they were two months ago.
The community in general is healthier, the users are happy and reccommending Steem to their acquaintances and trying to onboard people on a daily basis, a lot of projects are thriving and getting organic support, new users are not getting completely ignored as they used to be, experienced users are not quitting after months of not getting recognition.
I bet you have noticed that, you must have. Your posts are getting more organic votes, you are getting more comments from new users and old users alike and most importantly, you don't see several posts a day from minnows complaining how the rewards pie is reserved for only a selected elite. In fact, the vast majority of posts talking about the reward pool are written with a positive attitude.
But there is still one thing that the community of #NewSteem would value enormously, perhaps as much as they value how the bid bots changed their voting behaviour...
That is the way the OGs, the experienced users who are here for a long time, vote on a daily basis.
There's this perception, from both small stakeholder and big whales alike, that some Steemians are ignoring other users and allocate a big chunk - if not most - of the voting power to a select group of people, you may call them friends or even family.
I get it. I have friends on the Steem Blockchain. Friends I've known for years now, people I've met in person in both Steem Fests, users who I speak with on a daily basis both about business and pleasure. I vote on them of course, if I say I don't I would be lying and insulting your intelligence.
But in order to make Steem a better place I try to spread my voting power to other users.
Let's not get into the economic and financial consequences of spreading my voting power outside of my inner circle.
I know my fair share of economy and finances and I bet you do, but talking about that would be a never ending story and discussing theories and how they apply to the microeconomic environment that is Steem and the possible outcomes of applying each of them on this Blockchain would lead to nothing.
Let's focus on the social aspects of changing our voting behaviour
We've seen that spreading our votes is benefical for the community. More people are staying (ie, not ragequitting) and a lot more Steemians are positive about Steem's future.
I might brought attention to this post by linking it on a post of yours. I hope you're still reading this, I trully do
I get that you want to support your friends. I understand that your family comes first when deciding who to vote with a 100% VP vote. It's clear that you want to protect your investment and you can do whatever the hell you want with your hard earned Steem.
It may have taken you years of posting high quality content to accummulate the Steem Power you have at the moment. You probably invested a large amount of Fiat to have me, a random minnow ask you to vote one way or another. Who knows, maybe you think the Steem price is never going to get to an ATH and you prefer to grow your stake and your acquaintance's stale instead of growing someone else's.
I get it, I truly do and I'm not someone to question your motives or your reasons. I'm sure you are convinced they are positive and they hold the most value for you.
But chances are, you've had this mindset for a while now. I could bet my small stake that you're still voting the same way you used to vote before the last Hardfork and before this #NewSteem jibber jabber began.
My question is, NO, actually my plea is, why don't you try giving a chance to NewSteem and manual curation by spreading your votes among other users?
Try it for a while. Give it chance.
Take a dive in #created. Check out other people's posts. Try widening your inner circle. You might be surprised at how many amazing authors are out there. I know I've seen them and I know they would be grateful to receive a vote from you.
You might earn less rewards on your posts. After all, if all of us stop voting so much on our friends and family well, they will do the same, since we are all adopting the New Steem attitude and giving manual curation a fair chance to work.
But take a leap of faith. Give manual curation and New Steem a chance and spread the love, give your votes to other people and wait and see.
Who knows, perhaps all these users realize that anyone, big or small, new or old, any user can get a nice vote from you if they post quality content.
I know I said I wouldn't mention economic factors on this post but I changed my mind...
Who knows, maybe your posts earn less, but your stake is worth a lot more if you spread the votes, since every user you support will bring in more people, and if these people get some support, they might buy some steem, and the negative snowball Steem had before the Hardfork becomes an incredibly positive domino effect where people see value in buying Steem.
There are many if, might, perhaps and may on this post... but I bet it's worth a try. I bet you will see the value on this idea.
Give it a try. Give NewSteem and manual curation a chance, try changing a bit your voting pattern.
I promise it will be worth the effort.