Maybe having the dollar amount visible isn't such a good idea afterall.

So I was reading the comments of one of my youtube videos and came across a very rare, but interesting, negative comment. The user stated that Steemit was a scam and a ponzi. At that moment they had my attention because I've been waiting on some negative feedback about Steemit because everything you hear is always good news. So I continued to read and seen where the commenter had left a second comment saying, "the whole steemit thing would be fair if the $ amount didn't show for the first 24 hours, because everyone only votes on shitty posts that have a high $ sign there." Then continued, "The way this system is set up, people coming in will only make the whales bigger and bigger and won't benefit themselves at all." This was very interesting to me because I had been seeing this already but it never crossed my mind to try to come up with a solution. When I first joined steemit and began browsing the "New" tab, I always skimmed past posts with $0.00 earning because I literally saw no value. Monetarily or content wise. Without trying, my mind automatically came to the conclusion that the post with zero earnings is not worth my time or upvote. When in reality there could be hidden gold. But being that the user is probably new and has low SP, their post went ignored.

Power

The power for users to upvote their own comment is the root of this problem. When a user with huge steem power upvotes their own content. This sometimes turns out to be an advertisement for their post. If I'm scrolling through looking for content and I see a post that has earned $50 in 15 minutes then I automatically stop and click on it. No matter who wrote it, no matter what the title says, they automatically gain my undivided attention. The reality of this is larger accounts have the ability to, in a sense, cheat. When a large account upvotes themselves they could gain up to $50 from their own upvote bringing more attention from smaller users who want to feed off of the post and gain some curation rewards. The value of the post then doesn't matter because they are going to get your vote and my vote regardless of what the post is about because we all know money talks. This could taint the platform in the future because huge accounts could post negative political agendas and other propaganda and always receive votes because the payout is so large. Money has a huge effect on the minds of humans and we will do a lot when we see $ signs.

Fair Face Value

After doing some thinking I have come to agree with the YouTube commenter. Not the side of the argument that says steemit is a scam, but the side that says the $ amount for a post should be hidden for the first 24 hours. This idea would only help the community in my eyes. If the $ amount is hidden then users will be forced to read content no matter what their class on Steemit is. Everyone will be viewed as equal on face value and more posts will be read and curated based on actual interest. I actually believe there is less reading going on here on steemit now because of the dollar amount being visible. They figure that if a post is upvoted and earned that much then there really isn't a need to read it because the dollar amount shows that it was worth the read. This isn't a HUGE problem but I do believe SOME tweaking of the system may be needed. I love steemit and I want whats fair for everyone here. Many whales may disagree with this post but it's ok. I'm at 3,000 SP myself so this would effect me also but I still want whats fair for everyone. Leave your thoughts below in a comment. Do you agree or disagree?