I self vote maybe 1/20 or sometimes 1/10 but overall I think it's more like 1/100 and when I do it it's always because I want to move my comment up, some might call that disingenuous but I don't see one problem with using the clout and mechanism designed for that, to do that, yes it's still inauthentic with regard that the system is supposed to work with others curating others instead of others curating themselves and obviously this can be abused quite simply and to such an extent that it has become a rather serious problem, but there's quite a difference between upvoting yourself for visibility and doing it for profit.
This post talks about the prisoner dilemma and I think the people who are doing this are doing it because they have (1) invested their own money, and/or (2) they are here to make a buck, and/or (3) haven't suffered the usual direct consequences of abusing the self voting.
These people are justified in (1) and (2) and ignorant or unaware of (3), because simply it is up to everyone to say "hey, that's not right" and we have the tools to correct this, so that their objective to make money or return on their investment will need to adapt to "curate others and create".
Good points. I understand the matter about getting visibility which makes sense. For those who invested their own money or are looking to make a buck, they should look at the long term implications of self-voting and if everyone else was doing that.
Truer words were never spoke.
To be fair, I totally understand that those who invested will not want a change in the incentives structure, but doesn't it come down to whether Steem is a short-term cash cow, or a long-term social media platform?
Maybe if the economic incentives changed, self-voting on comments for visibility could seem more reasonable because in doing so, you would be sacrificing some profit for visibility. That feels like a more natural trade-off.
The difficulty of analysis isn't as severe as the flag disincentive problem. I work on many such tools as @steemreports.
If somebody only has a profit motive, trying to change their behaviour though appeals to morality or long-termism won't work as well as changing the economic incentives.