I often read through the created section on steemit to see what people are writing about. What I do is scroll down through several pages and read posts that are approaching 30 minutes mark.
Yep, I am one of those people who reads and upvotes posts just to see if I can snag a curation reward. I got 0.011 STEEM last week playing this game.
What I've noticed is that a huge number of Steemians upvote their post immediately after posting.
Apparently people do this because being the first vote increases the percent of the post rewards that they receive.
I think the practice is foolish because it also has the effect of decreasing the number of upvotes one receives.
When curating posts, I often skip posts that already have an author upvote. The self-upvote indicates the author is just after STEEM and is not interested in engaging with others. Why bother reading the post if the author isn't interested in interacting with others.
I suspect that thousands of other people on SteemIt do the same thing.
Dropping a self-vote after posting has two effects. Yes, it increases the author's percent of the reward, but it decreases the total reward. The second effect is hidden.
The curation reward is to reward people for curating. Taking the curation reward from the people who read your post either by a self voting or by a hiring a voting to upvote shows contempt for the people who take time to read your post. It is bad form.
I read yesterday that HF20 will reduce curation rewards for people who self-vote on their posts in the first thirty minutes. People who want SteemIt to succeed are cheering this change.
I applaud the move, but want to add that self-voting in the first minute is a foolish move.
BTW: I confess, I upvote my own posts. but I do so for a different reason.
I vote on my posts as a way to reward the people who have interacted with my post.
I usually drop the self-upvote several hours after the post. The ideal strategy is to drop the self vote four days after posting. The goal of my self-upvote isn't just to reward oneself, but to reward interaction.
My account is still in the plankton. My 100% upvote is worth under a tenth of a penny. Let me do the math. A quarter of an eighth of a penny is, uh, okay, what I am doing right now is mincing dust.
I am a krill who imagines himself a minnow. I will continue this practice even if ever I become a redfish or a minnow.
The picture is of a kitty engaged in self-reflection by MVolodymyr on Big Stock Photo
