I still refuse to buy votes or self vote. How much I make is not that important and I want my posts to stand by what others think of them. I want engagement in comments. That's what makes social media fun. I may never make enough to justify the time I spend here, so it has to be enjoyable.
Steemit have to decide if they actually want this thing to succeed. They would need to invest some of their millions on promoting it as community efforts can only go so far.
I had hoped for a much bigger community by now, but I'm sticking with it as I have made so many friends. I've seen other social sites die and I would hate to see Steem go the same way.
That's fine, though it's a common place to buy votes now days & it gives returns. A part of Steem is having resources to vote, & gain rewards, so not doing either is pride or stupidity. You can still make your posts stand out whilst earning rewards, & feel good knowing you deserved those rewards. You can also use those rewards to give back. It's really free choice, so I totally understand & respect your wishes.
Yeah, promoting Steemit is good & all, but without having a real community that thrives for this place(not just for the rewards I just mentioned), whom are truly addicted to Steemit, & love posting good shit, Steemit will remain what it is; A wasteland of good, bad, & ugly blog posts with very minimal user organic user engagement. I've already said all this years ago, & hiring marketing teams hasn't helped.
I think STEEM as a blockchain could thrive if developers continue to pluck away at individual projects. I find it sad however that a lot of these projects receive no funding by the guys that conceived this fintech. That's really none of my business & leaves me personally feeling conflicted. I'm glad smart tokens can solve that, given there's enough people trading on Steem's network.
Just because buying votes is common does not make it a good thing for Steem as a platform. Too many people are just in a dash for cash and the trending page is largely junk due to this.
Of course we cannot stop people buying votes and the freedom we have is a major attraction of Steem.
We have the issue of people not joining did to a lack of big names and the stars won't join if the audience is small.
I agree entirely.