Steem wishes for 2017 : 1) a decentralized app 2) removal of the SBD
A decentralized social media app interfacing to the Steem blockchain is necessary to fend off the assault by governments and financial elites on inconvenient information which exposes their wrongdoings, aka"Fake News".
The "Fake News" agenda ain't going away and infact the EU is doubling down and considering introducing fines. Any post deemed "fake news", "hate speech", "russian propaganda"etc will be taken down or obscured by the EU Ministry of Truth. If not the hosting sites will be faced with hefty fines.
@dantheman picked up on this but his solutions are mere legal technicalities which legislators will be able to tear apart (if a law becomes an obstacle they change the law, simple) and even the self-labelling of posts as fake news won't cut it...as the fake news label will most likely mean internet oblivion in the near future.
https://steemit.com/fakenews/@dantheman/the-future-of-real-news
End goal should be a decentralized uncensorable social media app. a text only version in 2017 would be already an important milestone. At the moment I'm only aware of Twister (a clone of Twitter) as a decentralized social media app, but unfortunately it is not delivered in a way that it can be adopted by the masses (no executable etc). Something like Twister based on Steem would already be fantastic and a gamechanger. So even if the centralized Steemit website would one day have to surrender to the tyrants, the decentralized app would survive unscathed and uncensored.removal of SBD, using Steem as currency instead!
at the moment the currency dominating the Steemit economy is the US Dollar = the SBD.
users pay each other in SBDs when exchanging services and also the coin used to promote posts is the SBD (there's not even an option to pay with Steem ).
I think this undermines Steem as a currency and reinforces the status quo of a US dollar based world (frankly it goes against everything I believe in). I'd like to see SBD scrapped as soon as possible. Now that there isn't hyperinflation no more the use of Steem as a currency is viable.
best wishes for 2017! Steem on!!
Simon
This is only my opinion. I am not an expert of money but I think I could represent a part of the community that I think also needs to be considered regarding SBD:
I agree with the removal of SBD in that it makes the economic set up of Steemit easier to understand, thus requires less thinking (and doubting) of deciding to join and continuing in the long run.
I myself have troubles dealing with SBD because I am not sure how to sell it. All I know is that I could convert STEEM to Bitcoin. Also, I think that the familiarity of the word "dollar" is not sufficient enough to compensate the complexity that SBD adds and the huge population that will be affected by it.
It was only upon reading the whitepaper when I found out about SBD's similarity to a convertible note. But I don't think everybody else would read the whitepaper as well. Or if they do, they won't be able to understand it immediately because they are not experts about money.
During conventions or promotions, I think we could just tell the listeners that: