You have some misconceptions about Steem. David Pakman and others that produce content on Youtool, Fakebook, and the Big Tech platforms are attracting the eyes of the masses in order to profit from it. The means used to do that isn't engaging and discussing with thousands or millions of people, because that's impossible for one person to do. It's to produce some content that thousands or millions of people will see, and profit from advertising as a result of attracting all those eyeballs.
This method of producing content is different than engaging with followers and discussing matters personally. People that are primarily concerned with economic rewards therefore seek big sheep followings, and tend not to engage with individuals one on one, as Steem potentiates. Content on Big Tech platforms is fundamentally different than content designed to encourage engagement on Steem. It doesn't translate.
While you're correct about holding stake and how that stake provides rewards, you may not grasp that all the Steem that is in existence was mined before Steem social media was created, and most of that stake is still in the wallets of those that mined it. It is those ninjaminers, the whales, that reward or ignore creators on Steem, because they have the stake. They use their stake today, and will increase their ability to after HF21, to extract ~90% of the rewards from the pool. Actual creators are the bastard stepchildren, and massive stakeholders are heirs apparent.
Pakman came here, didn't make much, and doesn't bother with all the work of engagement, because that's not his business model. Liberals tend to collectivize because that's what they believe in, and individualization poorly fits that world view, while dovetailing nicely with Big Tech, because they're liberals too.
Lastly, I do just vote on what I like, and post what I believe. Money is not the most valuable aspect of society, and Steem bases it's votes and flags only on money. This is because the whales designed it that way from the get go, because they cared about money more than the more valuable aspects of society. I don't. Many people don't, and almost all of the people that came to Steem social media have left, because their values weren't reflected by the focus on money.
Communities may change that, if the rampant stake weighting of Steem doesn't prevent their tokens from expressing the values of those communities. HF21 is going to exacerbate all the problems of stake weighting within a week, and we'll see how that effects the communities that have arisen using SE tokens and Palnet already.
We'll soon see if the financial stake weighting on Steem disables those communities from creating more valuable societies than mere economies reflect, or if they can thrive and prosper.
In the video referenced above, David is engaging with his audience by taking calls. You're right that one person can't reply to 10k comments as is present on a creator of Davids scale on YT, but that's not the only way to engage an audience. Most youtube creators find some way, it's a totally normal thing. The problem is they don't take Steem seriously so they just dump their content here without making an actual effort.
Well this is obviously not true, but I'm going to assume you mean a large portion of the stake is in the hands of whales. That's definitely true, and it's also true that most of them have not been good stewards of that stake, but you're ignoring the fact that there are thousands of other people here all with different sized stakes. Their influence is not nothing. You don't need whale votes to be successful, and the more regular people we could sign up and educate about Steem, the more decentralization becomes a tangible reality.
He's literally doing it in the video he posted here. He's just doing it for his YT audience not a Steem audience, which btw is understandable. His YT audience is over 700k people and all of active Steem, if I'm being generous is maybe 15k people, but if he(David) wants a REAL solution, then he has to help us build. He has the ability to drive a huge amount of traffic here. If he did ONE video, that was totally focused on Steem, where he did a quick rundown of what Steem is and told people, follow me on Steem, we could easily get thousands of new signups in a day.
I appreciate your substantive reply. Pakman appeared on some MSP radio interviews, and did attempt to engage on Steem, but gave up. He hasn't not tried it.
No. It is literally true that the whales hold the vast majority of stake. Every bit of Steem in existence was mined, and all of it that has been sold to others or created via inflation is a small percentage of it. I suggest doing some research on the matter, starting from the initial ninjamine that was very offensive to many in the crypto community. Steemd will reveal who has mined stake, and further exploration of who holds stake, such as statistics from @arcange (image below from his post today) will reveal that the vast majority of stake is concentrated in only a few dozen hands. Some of those ninjaminers have thousands of accounts. It's possible that the majority of accounts are owned by whales, in fact.
We have, in the past, got thousands of signups per day. Almost 100% of those new accounts were abandoned due to the rampant profiteering stake weighting enabled the whales to undertake, and the flagging of those that protest such into complete invisibility. Steemit itself is now completely censoring many accounts (almost all held by one person, @fulltimegeek), and although that doesn't prevent information posted by those accounts from remaining on the blockchain, almost no one can see it because Steemit runs the nodes and publishes the APIs many frontends such as Steempeak use, and very few people use frontends or apps that do show such content. Github reveals this fact with the irredeemable's list. You can ascertain these facts for yourself.
This graph shows the distribution of Steem Power cumulated per account level.
The grey portion of each column indicates unused Steem Power by inactive accounts (see above for the definition of inactive).
You can see that whales directly hold most of the Steem today, and once you realize that most of them have many accounts, or 'socks'/bots, most of the dolphins and orcas are also accounts held by the same people that hold the whale accounts. The vast majority of Steem is held by those individuals, through their multiple accounts.
HF21 is going to more than halve author rewards within the week. IMHO, this is a very poor time to be onboarding masses, who will be extremely prone to abandoning Steem in short order as HF21 makes all the reasons user retention is awful far worse.
In a couple weeks the falling price, market cap, and decline in users will prove I am right, or prove I am wrong by not. We'll see if Steem is ready for mass onboarding or not. I'll be very happy if I'm wrong, as I want Steem to fulfill it's potential to change the world. I don't think it will until profiteering based on stake weighting is abandoned, and capital gains becomes the focus of ROI by investors.
We'll see.