Hi everyone! 

This may be something that you agree or disagree but it is important to speak out and discuss this kind of stuff.


# I've recived many private messages lately mainly from new people begging for votes and trying to make me to trade vote for vote. Is this the idea of Steemit? #




The last message I have recived from @murtazasyedm made me think what will this place look like if these people achieve their goals:

###### "hey I have created a group for supporting steemit posts. Here are few things about the group IF YOU WANT TO JOIN AND YOU ARE INTERESTED LET ME KNOW.
###### The purpose of this group is to promote posts of group members on steemit. Here are two important rules of the group.
###### Rule1: Every member has to upvote fellow members' post
###### Rule2: Member can promote only one post in 48 hours.

###### Inactive members will have to say goodbye to the group within 7 days and they will be replaced by awaited members. Maximum members of the group will be *20* and can be increases in future with the consent of other members. Furthermore, members are not bound to follow each other, that's completely up to the members whether to follow other group members or not.
###### *And here are the benefits of the group*.
###### 1. Each and every member reputation will improve
###### 2. Each and every member steempower will increase

###### As a result members will have powerful vote which will attract other member to follow them and consequently, more rewards.
###### If you are interested I can send you a link to the group. "

Am I the only one who thinks this is really destructive? At first I was like "Well it was really hard for me when I started writing and it is still hard sometimes, maybe I should have more compassion."  Then I have asked myself few questions:

1. Have I ever begged for the upvotes? No.
2. Have I ever tried to make other people be present if they do not want it? No.
3. Have I ever told people I will upvote them just if they upvote me? No.

# Why? Because I have some self-respect as well as respect for other users and their free will.

Recently @l0k1 pointed me some arguments about self-voting. I did not understand this at first and I was self-voter too but after a while I got the point. Upvoting is a feedback and good critique to our own work. What is the point of evaluating my own work? From the moment I have realized this I stopped self-voting. I think these two things are pretty much connected. The lack of consciousness and self-awareness.

![sketch.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmehX5Mup7pf4bNLWGxxkhb5FzdK7U7XtHJLH6TcgtqQz2/sketch.jpg)

Now some of you will probably say everyone has right to do what they want. If they want to self-vote, they can, if they want to make groups where you HAVE TO upvote every member they can but what about the rest of honest members who do not want to participate in this kind of stuff? What is our choice? 

Letting people like @murtazasyedm making closed groups with this kind of rules will make this place battlefield where groups will represent people instead of place where good content is. Big groups of people voting for each other will lower quality of the content in general because there is no question is your story valuable. The only question is who voted for you and your obligation of turning back upvote no matter if a story of that person is good or not. These people can make individuals minority and that is the moment when the  story of freedom and the decentralization dies.

I hope that some of you will understand what I wanted to say and than we can maybe make a difference. My goal wasn't offending anyone but defending the idea of place where you got paid for your work not your connections.

Thank you all for reading. I look forward your comments and arguments about the topic.