I think this one can get a conditional pass. Though I'm sure many, maybe even most, are looking for an easy upvote back some may be legitimately expressing that your content was worth an upvote. I think it's best to just assume the best and that they mean well and move on. No use stressing over it if you can't tell for certain.
People who specifically ask for upvotes and follows are a different story. I'm tempted to start replying to all such comments with just "no"
I usually look at people's reputation too. If they have 25 rep and are writing about having 100+ followers, I pass them over. It also helps to upvote good comments so they appear at the top while all the bot/spam comments are down low and receive no payouts ;)
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Yes, that is true too. Trying to build my voting power back to 100% right now, but look forward to upvoting the better commenters. Not that it's worth much right now, but at least it helps order the comments.
I pay so little attention to Rep I find. I would love to know the stats on how used it is. I'm getting more attention these days and I feel like that's at least a part of it.
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That makes sense
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I just vote very carefully and so I always have lots of voting power. I also flag spam when I see it and resteem really interesting content. While I'm doing all this, I keep finding people who are interesting and not spammers and so I follow them and they do the same so there is this network effect where steem started off sucky and over time it's getting better and the good content is turning up in my feed more often.
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Also trying to find a balance with my follow feed. I often end up following people I have good conversations with, then find all they do is repost crypto articles :/ Can't pinpoint the types of articles that really get my attention, but those are not it. Just takes time an practice though I guess.
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Yeah
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