RE: NEW YEAR, NEW RESOLUTIONS. DO THEY WORK?
Venting.
85% of SP (limited upvoting capital) is owned by Whales & Orcas. Most of such SP is being delegated to bidbots and other game-rigging mechanisms in an effort to generate Passive Income (interest) instead of Curation Awards. This, of course, destroys the entire concept upon which Steemit is predicated ... that there will be a correlation between the production of Quality Content and Compensation.
And so, Steemit slowly dies. The people who could change this, the Whales and Witnesses, are, of course, the very people who own the bidbots. Ironically, they are also the ones who have the most to lose ... but as long as someone else is doing it, so too will they.
And hence, they all sit around watching the price of STEEM spiral downward, in direct correlation with the number of declining active users. As STEEM is an inflationary currency (the Reward Pool increases the Monetary Supply, thereby decreasing the price of STEEM), an increasing user-base is the fundamental condition upon which all else depends (new users are required to sop up the newly issued currency to negate the inflationary effect).
What is the only thing that sets Steemit apart from the multitude of other competing social media platforms ... and hence, the magnet that attracts new users? Compensation for Content. But such compensation is entirely dependent upon how the Whale/Orca SP (85% of the total) is deployed. Such massive SP diversion away from its intended purpose prevents authors (and professional curators) from earning anything substantial based up Quality Content creation/curation. Either cheat, work for next to nothing ... or leave.
This is not a winning formula.
And yet, instead of enacting the obvious remedy ... killing the vote-buying/selling mechanisms ... all we hear from Whales and Witnesses is stupid Anarchist ideological mantras: "No Rulers, No Rules;" "Decentralization;" "Everyone Gets To Vote Their Stake" ... as if mouthing such ideological pablum does anything to address the underlying problem.
STEEM/Steemit is a Killer App ... that is being killed off by the very people who have the most to gain from it living ... all in the service of short-term self-interest and 'ideological purity' ... Satoshi's Dream. Adoption of common sense "Rules of Conduct" ... to stop the flagrant cheating ... would be akin, it is argued, to communism, fascism and totalitarian control.
Quill
Hi @quillfire
Steemit only dies in eyes of those who are interested in monetary rewards. It's still the best platform to build influence within crypto space out there.
Plus communities here and high level of engagement are the reason why this platform will not die anytime soon. There is simply nothing better that could replace Steemit and push it into "shadows".
Absolutely not.
Steemit allows me to target audience better than any platform out there. Mostly because I can scan STEEM blockchain and easily find content creators that are valuable for me.
More and more people and businesses seem to slowly realize that this is the only platform (currently) out there which still enjoys good traffic and is allowing people to engage with each other.
Those who are here because of "compensation" and rewards will never last very long.
Yours
Piotr
@quillfire You might be interested in projects like @steembasicincome, curation efforts like @curie and the various communities that often include curation and mutual support as part of them.
I've written before that there is no objective measures of quality that a blockchain can enforce. That leaves judgement of quality to somebody's audience. A mutual co-audience is roughly what I'd call a community. It's the communities that need to gain in power.
To that end, I support community builders via sponsorship to @msp-makeaminnow and I also am working on @we-are (see @we-are-one for the blog) to help communities get technical tools and access to SP. @we-are is in closed trial and currently supports around 1500 members.
That's mostly what I'm involved in. Can't say I'm innocent on the bidbot front myself - I do need to make an income until I can build my audience enough to earn from posting alone. So, I can somewhat sympathise with people who go that way. But, a big chunk of my steem networth is in community building because community is everything.
I might need some help too.