I don't think the voting for witnesses was buying votes, as they were not told who to vote on specifically, just to vote. Obviously, who they "should" vote on was implied - but not an explicit mandatory condition. Jerry Banfield sold votes for witness votes, so did frystikken i think back in the day.
I see these types of posts as a call to action, in the same way that Dan has done it to get support for exchange listings and blockchain competitions many times earlier.
Phew! I thought I had lost my moral compass (honestly). Thanks for helping me to find it.
You are right on a closer look, this is more like a 'rock the vote' campaign. It does need to be kept in check. And yeah, it was implied.
However I do wonder, would you get an upvote if you voted Tron Sock Puppet 1~20 and screen shoot that (balls of steel :)
In many countries, people are paid to donate blood or given free stuff and volunteer hours. Is this unethical to sell your body elementals? In the case of upvotes for steem that is like a financial exchange and the downvote is only annoying because it reduces the value of the exchange.
EDIT:
yeah strongly implied is mildly putting it.
It was very clear and explicit that the author told who to vote and who not to vote. Either proxy him or vote the list he wrote. Let me quote:
Well... technically it doesn't say who to vote on. it says to maximize the votes, we need to vote for the same, but not who the same were and the 22-42 would have been changing. The proxy is a choice to make. Either way, I think the person would have got votes.
Are they not sockpuppets that threaten the decentralization of the chain, something that nearly every user on the platform disagrees with?
And speaking of the disagreement. If you and others did disagree with this particular call to action and the votes that were handed out, you would have been able to null the votes through downvoting for disagreement of rewards. That is what they are for.
I do not see this is votebuying as it was completely opt-in - it is definitely a call to action though and like I said, @theycallmedan and others have used this many times before to gather support for community benefits. No one complains if it is to get a listing on an exchange, but it is a problem to defend a dPOS chain from centralization?
It seems that you view this in a very different way. If you think that asking for proxy in exchange of vote ( "Prove your votes below to earn a nice sized upvote from me! Either PROXY ME ..." ) is okay ("choice to make"?), well, I guess we don't need to talk about this anymore.