We Do Not Need @ned To Be The Face Of STEEM
There appears to be many people who are still in the conditioned mindset of centralization.
Let me ask, what do these people have in common:
Elon Musk
Bill Gates
Steve Jobs
Mark Zuckerberg
Warren Buffet
Jamie Dimon
They are all faces associated with centralized organizations. Each person has the name of a company associated with him. Flip it around, and you get a similar answer.
Who comes to mind when you see these names:
Tesla
Microsoft
Apple
Facebook
Berkshire Hathaway
JPMorgan
It is very common in the centralized world to see individuals identified with companies. Sometimes, the individual becomes such a big persona that he eclipses the company itself.
Which brings me back to the world of Steem. We are a decentralized network. Since that is the case, why do people keep falling prey to the idea of having a "face" tied to our ecosystem?
I see a lot of calls for Steemit to do marketing. As bad as this is, I come across other posts calling for @ned to get out and start promoting STEEM. This is a horrible idea.
The last thing we want to have happen is for @ned, or any other person for that matter, identified as STEEM. This is simply playing into the elite's hands.
We know the power of decentralization is that there is no single point of access. When people want us to turn to Steemit to handle particular tasks, we are once again creating that single point. It gets even more vulnerable when we try to put a "face" out there.
Again, it is very simple: if they discredit the person or company, the entire ecosystem suffers a huge blow.
STEEM is not Steemit. And it certainly is not @ned. It is much bigger than either.
@ned speaks for Steemit, a private company and a stakeholder in the Steem blockchain. However, he does not speak for the community. The second one is put out there making the rounds, that is when the masses will start to equate STEEM with a single individual.
There is enough confusion as it is. Even some seasoned people on here use the term Steemit when they mean Steem.
Last week I brought up the point on the chat of Crypto Connie's @bluerocktalk show about not having Steem represented in the Bitcoin Dynasty. Her response was to call it Steemit like she always does which is misleading her viewers. She also said that she would love to get @ned on the show.
Once again, someone who supposedly is in the know who thinks @ned is the one to talk to about Steem.
Personally, I have no malice towards @ned. From the few videos I saw of him, he is a fine speaker and could be a great representative to be out in front. However, in our battle against the centralized institutions, the last thing we need is a centralized point of access i.e. a face for them to attack. It is also misguided to think that @ned would express views of the ecosystem. He is CEO and represents Steemit. That is what he will promote.
Steem is fortunate in that it is quickly becoming an application-centric blockchain. It is marching ahead of most other systems in this regard. In an updated for October post, here is a list of the top 5 blockchains with working products.
The first one listed is Steem. Here is what it had to say:
Steem is the cryptocurrency that powers Steemit, a decentralized social media platform that incentivizes user participation through micro-payments. A great comparison of the Steemit site is Reddit with a very evident distinction. Instead of upvotes and downvotes, users encourage participants through micro-payments with Steem.
Steem also works exclusively on the Steemit platform which gives it uniqueness but also limited use outside of the platform. The last point of limited use is contradicted with Steemit boasting a few hundred thousand users and content reaching thousands of dollars worth of Steem.
https://medium.com/theblock1/top-5-working-products-in-blockchain-updated-october-2018-9b18548bf8fc
Leaving aside the numbers being somewhat off, notice how this piece articulated Steemit where it really should be Steem. Nevertheless, the point is that we do have working applications with people using them on a daily basis, Steemit being one of them.
I have no problem with @ned out promoting Steemit much in the same way as if @heimindanger starts promoting @dtube. Developers and people from those projects promoting what they are doing is a great idea. However, they speak for their specific applications only.
Of course, I am well aware that Steemit is more than just an application, they also do the development for the blockchain itself. That said, they do not implement anything. This is up to the Witnesses. Ergo, we see another group of people who are able to promote the blockchain. Many of the Witnesses do a fine job in an interview setting talking about what is going on with this blockchain. In fact, many of them are involved in Steem-based projects themselves.
This is a very important point that I think needs to be driven home. We need to decentralize as much as possible. While some things might take some time, it is not wise to start calling for Steemit nor @ned to do more with marketing or publicity. They are only going to promote Steemit, which they should. That is where their responsibility lies.
One of the biggest problems I have with the mindset many have is because it is ingrained in us to make sure we have someone to blame. Steemit and @ned are targets. Even though this is our blockchain that we are responsible for, let's us make sure we have a whipping post for when things go bad. Too often I saw posts such as "@ned needs to do something about ________" like he is overseer of Steem.
That mindset is not of decentralization. It is nothing more than putting daddy in charge since we are not accustomed to taking care of ourselves.
I was happy to see @ned's comments about designing another interface, one that includes a completely different corporate structure. Personally, I do not care if he starts 50 different companies, each creating a different application. In fact, I hope he does. The more that is on this blockchain, the better it is for all of us.
What I do not want is more consolidation, especially in the minds of people. We need to promote the idea of decentralization and this starts with our message.
Source
Actually, it starts with our mindset.
The face of STEEM is all of us.
We should promote it that way.
For a great reminder about this, here is a wonderful article by @lukestokes. It should be required reading for every Steemian.
https://steemit.com/steem/@lukestokes/steem-is-not-steemit-steem-is-more-valuable-than-steemit
If you found this article informative, please give it an upvote and resteem.
@taskmaster4450 - build your own .com site if you want to be a .com boss.
Flagged for moronic clickbait and hate speech.
Steem isn't truely decentralized, it's controlled by 15 witnesses? (supermajority) But that's a separate topic. I see it as semi-decentralized, it's definitely a step in the right direction from completely centralized.
If they really want to separate steemit and the steem blockchain, they should rebrand steemit to a different name altogether, and forward all traffic to a new domain. Normies (people who don't understand blockchain tech) will likely always link the two together. Actually I think Ned is in the process of doing this by starting a new corporate structure and domain to onboard normies, which makes sense since naming the company steemit Inc, doesn't really reflect the mission.
Saying that 15 witnesses control Steem is not exactly accurate. You need a consensus of 2/3 of the witnesses (if I recall correctly) to determine which is the longest chain. That's about 15 block producers. For a hardfork you need 17 to reach consensus if I am not mistaken. However, the rewards pool is allocated based on the stake-weighted voting of the SP holders. That is a different layer of decentralization (or lack there of).
However if we only measure the number of block producers then a blockchain like Steem is"more" decentralized than bitcoin (for example) which has 8 mining pools with 84% of the hashing power. But that is another story.
8 or 17 still about the same in terms of decentralization in my book. I'd like to see account based witness voting, that would be much more decentralized than we have now, which is a plutocracy. But that'll never happen because you would never get a supermajority of witnesses to vote themselves out their own positions to make it democratic.
Fore account based voting we would need to have some sort of proof of identity or uniqueness of an account to prevent sybil attacks. Otherwise someone could easily create a multitude of accounts and replace the witnesses with possible nefarious intentions. Stake weighted voting prevents that.
Ultimately it is a user with millions of Steem power who controls who gets to be in the top 20.
I would choose @battleaxe she has what it takes to tango.
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Well written article which pretty much sums up my frustration as well. There are too many people who equate Steem platform/blockchain to Steemit. Steemit is merely the first app integrated with the Steem platform/blockchain. More people need to be aware of this differentiation and it will only do justice to this decentralized platform.
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I disagree. The strongest open source communities all have at least a benevolent dictator or several central figures.
Only DOGE is an exception to that but that’s because there is no vision. And that’s fine like that.
Steem would be a lot bigger already if we had a central figure. We would have many more dApps building already.
And the proof is in the pudding: Steemit Inc themselves have announced a fund for SMTs (or at least put the news out that they were open to take funding to operate a fund).
Edit: I partly disagree. You are right but at this point a central [entity] would still accelerate us massively. But, it’s more complex than both sides.
So you have two types of 'figureheads' when it comes to projects, and we'll be generous and call Steemit a project which it's not but that's a whole other can of worms. You have people that own it (Or used to own it) such as Bill Gates [Microsoft] or Mark Shuttleworth [Canonical-nee-Ubuntu]. You could legitimately say that @ned falls into that category seeing as he holds a pretty large portion of the Steem , and then there are (Or were) Community leaders such as Jono Bacon and Ted Haeger former Community Managers of Ubuntu and Novell (SuSE) respectively.
Community Managers are actually a good idea, it gives participants a focus and someone to direct their grievances and fears towards something that Steemit is sadly lacking. I remember seeing (I've been out the loop for a bit) lots of posts from people desperate for help being advised to "Go on Discord...." which imo is appalling especially given that the current trend for Code of Conducts is prevalent across the Internet at the moment and yet most of the 'Moderation' is [or was] down to bots such as cheetah. Sadly, those who hold the purse strings start asking what is the value [in monetary terms] of having a community leader which is why the likes of Jono and Ted no longer head up their former respective communities.
Now people can't have it both ways, they can't have a decentralised service whereby nobody is in charge, nobody controls your data and they can use whatever the hell they like to connect to the service (Which actually they can't for the minute, so much for decentralisation. LOL) and then start moaning that nobody is stopping Billy big Balls from abusing them or for that matter "Nobody is spreading the word".
For me personally, I favour the idea of a community council elected by the community for an 18 month at a time tenure a bit like the Ubuntu Community Council with a good smattering of Steemit Ambassadors like the Fedora Project has. Again, these are all elected roles which can be rescinded at any time. #TwoPenneth
I was actually thinking of the DASH community, and also Blockpass, who mostly function based on community management.
The other model would be EOS with Blokc.one currently throwing hackathons everywhere.
We definitely need the second, and the first can be kickstarted by Steemit Inc.
Then, if we look at for example WordPress, “ownership” does lead to improved focus and results.
It’s complicated, but while still lacking the truly decentralized development I think some “guidance” is still welcome.
Otherwise it will be too many turf wars too soon.
As I say, I've been out of the loop for a bit so feel under qualified for the minute to make any firm judgements. I can't see what harm a Council with a Leader/Manager or even Glorious Leader if some would prefer could possibly do?
The concept of "Here's the ball, every idiot have a kick!" is no way to win a match.
I can agree that a central entity could have push this further ahead already. The challenge with that, in my view, is the entity becomes too tied with the ecosystem as the one people point to. Hence, if that entity suffers setbacks, most will view it as a set back for the ecosystem.
Like Steemit.com...the fact that they havent updated the app does not mean that Steem is stagnant. There is a lot more progress taking place on here.
But we will see how things unfold.
Even if Steemit Inc becomes more “prolific” (read: outspoken front facing), thanks to the roadmap we are on now, things will change in next 12-18 months because of DPOS. Yet, right now... they are still the place to go to, but that doesn’t mean that will always be like that.
I will write a post about next in next 12 hours.
@steemhunt is the place to go to!!!!
Great post, people confuse a lot in this space. Steem is not Steemit.
It's not a good time to market anyway. We are only adding ~ 200 new accounts per day. Then they get here and need to "buy in" if they want to comment and post more than a few times a day. Until that gets fixed, even if anyone is working on that issue, Steemit and Steem should be lying low.
Found this post on twitter with a bunch of other negative sounding tweets today.
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Hi @taskmaster4450 well said. Companies like Tesla and Microsoft etc don't need thier owner. They have grown up a lot and stakeholders can take it forward.
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