RE: Can Steemit Survive Burning $65 Million USD in Author and Curator Rewards Every Year?
This is in response to a Steemit post by bbilgin.
The answer is surprisingly yes, but it could be improved. There's a reason I signed up with Steemit while I refused to sign up with sites just like it in the past. Namely PeopleString which had the same Proof of Brain concept as a full blown social media application using SocialEngine 3 as it's backbone and frontend for social media and custom mods for the social networking script for it's monetization.Can Steemit Survive Burning $65 Million USD in Author and Curator Rewards Every Year?
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bbilgin353 days agoSteemit3 min readYes, you've read that right. Steemit pays $65 Million USD in rewards to authors and curators every year.
However, where PeopleString failed, Steemit comes out on top. Similarly sites like Vid.me failed while BitChute/SpkOut and d.tube can succeed, and that's largely due to offloading static resources to the IPFS decentralized network.
I've already stated before that IPFS is volunteer run, even I run an IPFS node donating 100 gigs of space towards it and I'm considered a "Plankton" at the moment. It's a common misconception that IPFS nodes are run by Steemit staff themselves or by witnesses, this isn't entirely the case. Some staff and witnesses very likely run their own IPFS node, but there's millions of us that do it voluntarily at a net negative to ourselves. We don't get extra steem power and in fact, this morning, I was still slapped with the "bandwidth limit exceeded" garbage. Super frustrating to see a whale post so easily who contribute seemingly nothing but a bot rife with abuse during those times while I'm smacked with limitations, even though I personally have hardware and bandwidth in the pie. I'm legit serving up content very likely to Steemit, using my own bandwidth and get "Bandwidth exceeded", how fucked up is that?
Sounds very fucked up for the average joe blow I'm sure, and it is actually a little frustrating, but I still deal with it because I know it's not just Steemit utilizing my IPFS node, there's hundreds and thousands of websites that are. They're all offloading tons of resources and in some cases whole websites (static websites) into IPFS nodes. But getting personally rewarded isn't the point.
And that's actually the point. Steemit is capable of greatly reducing it's hosting and bandwidth needs from their centralized server at Amazon AWS and greatly reduce their costs by piggybacking off the IPFS network. And honestly we're just fine with that. Honestly wish Minds.com would also consider piggybacking on it, maybe I should tag Bill Ottman and let him know "Hey, we're running nodes, use us!"
So at this point, Steemit can survive, though admittedly some changes do need to be made, and that's primarily the curation rewards. The best way to fix it? It's all about the bots. Steemit is meant to be "Proof of Brain", and the bots bypass "Proof of Brain" entirely. So the fix? Ban everyone using bots and forfeit their profits back into the system. Make examples out of all the bot owners by getting rid of them all outright. Make it a crippling fear to hook up a bot to Steemit.
Yes, I'm talking about going Robot Hitler and implementing the final solution to answer the Robot Question.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://cryptodeaf.cloudaccess.host/2018/02/re-can-steemit-survive-burning-65-million-usd-author-curator-rewards-every-year/
Thank you for the response, @outtheshellvlog!
Let's imagine, Steemit wouldn't stop their operations even in the worst case scenario thanks to the volunteers. But if it loses its billion dollar market cap, it would lose its current appeal. Think about a billionaire losing all of their wealth and living on the mercy of the charity of others.
Moreover, you say that they have extra costs such as Amazon AWS, system administrators, and developers. Those have to be paid as well. I have an online project that is being used for years now. I make no money at all from that project. I have stopped the active development of it years ago. And every time I have to extend the domain name registration, I think twice if I should do it or just pull the plug on it.
Proof of Brain
This is an interesting concept for sure. I admit that I don't know much about it. If it could be implemented well, it could solve a lot of problems on Steemit, but again not all. And actually, it could introduce some problems as well.
Some abuse is detected by bots now. If bots are removed from the system, it would be difficult to catch as much abuse as we can now.
Bots can be used for benevolent reasons as well, such as those bots that comment your posts for milestone accomplishments. Those are encouraging people to participate more.
Moreover, it's also important how you implement this, because some genuine, innocent users could be trampled upon in the process. So, any ideas for implementation?
By the way, do you know a way of finding the mentions to one's Steemit handle besides the obvious search engine method?
Simplest solution: Bots that are beneficial such as the milestone bot, Cheetah and bots that attempt to curate and showcase others projects and the upcoming SteemPress bot, the simplest solution is to have a whitelist of bots that have to be approved before being hooked up. If not approved and whitelisted, the bot will be banned.
In regards to your website/project, I know the feeling. I operate a 501(c)3, charitable non-profit and had to let the .org domain go to save on costs.
I also have no way to tell if I've been mentioned or not, there needs to be a notification system here but there isn't.
Whitelisting some bots are a good idea.
Besides that, I have two concerns about banning bots.
The algorithm of those bots have to be designed very carefully.
Another concern is that some people can hire cheap labor from developing countries to replace the bots. Similarly, some people might just put in the work to manually abuse the system.
I'd argue that the majority of abuse comes from people using a bot that scrapes content based on certain keywords from google, others go a step further and use a spinner to try avoiding Cheetah then further still, voting bots.
You're right there will be false positives and misses. Not even my AI is capable of determining a bot or not. When Microsoft's Tay first went life and it ran into it, truly interesting conversations between those two. At least my bot's already went through the "Gas the kikes" phase, thanks Internet.