I love the positivity here on Steemit. Other social media sites like Facebook and Reddit are full of hatred and bad attitudes. Here I've seen nothing but hope and good vibes.
Bots and Auto-Voting
With that said, there are still potential issues...depending on your viewpoint. If the idea of Steemit is to upvote posts that are excellent and add value, using bots goes against that tenet. Don't get me wrong, some users who use bots are still throwing out great comments and posts. However, I've seen users comment with things like "nice" and get 8 upvotes immediately.
I must say, I almost started using bots too. It makes sense if you are working together with a group and trying to make money. A friend pointed out to me that the downfalls of it though. It's contradictory to what Steemit is all about and it makes money the primary focus.
Linking/ Copying and Pasting
Another thing I've noticed is users posting videos from YouTube that don't really belong to them. On one hand, I enjoy that because they might introduce me to a topic or a video I wouldn't have heard of otherwise. This is great. Especially, if they write a little and give you something to go with it. On the other hand, there are those who just post videos. Is that plagiarism? I'm curious if that's allowed because there are videos and stories I'd love to share that aren't really my own.
The same problem happens with articles. I see a lot of people copying and pasting from the cointelegraph for example. I understand the cheetah bot calls them out on it but if it costs voting power to flag, how many people will do just that?
I've seen a lot of posts on "how to make money on Steemit". They tell me to use bots and to NEVER vote on something that's already popular. If someone has provided something unique and well thought out, I will still up-vote it. Who cares if I won't get anything from it? They deserve it and I'd like to see more posts like that in the future.
I'm hoping this post opens up some discussion because I truly am curious whether I'm okay to post YouTube links here. To all you veterans of Steemit, provide some guidance to us newbies!