Greedy Steemit: An extension piece
My last post Greed knows no bounds? had some lively and interesting discussions and I would like to thank those who are taking part. One quote I would like to expand on however is:
I think people have lost the principles of Steemit, but that was so predictable when "value" got involved. People share their lives for free on the others well known social networks without getting any reward. Here we can share and get or not some profit. Bots, fakes, cheaters, and a wide range of fortune seekers are all around. It is very easy to see who is who.
I think many hold this sentiment and I agree but, the other social platforms are identical with one difference, here at Steemit, the value, the cheaters, the bots and fortune seekers are all out in the open. As are the wallets the money goes to.
Steemit didn't introduce "value" into social media, it just chose to include the users and make them shareholders rather than cash cows. The other medias are plagued by fake accounts, automated responses, scams, begging, algorithmic discovery and a wide range of users willing to turn their lives into products in the hope to gain enough followers that a company will sponsor them.
All this, while the information gathered from the billions of users is systematically extracted and packaged for advertisers and governments to trawl through and find other ways to bend the user over and take a little more of their dignity and money. The platforms make billions, the advertising companies get billions, the governments billions... the user? The billions come from somewhere.
Everyone is mining on social sites, every post creates value, builds wealth, provides money, the difference is that it pours hand over fist into the pockets of conglomerates and investment funds who pass so little on to those whose money they use to invest and none into the hands of those they extract value from.
Who are the liars and cheaters? Who are the unprincipled? Who are the downtrodden? People are being taken advantage of at these sites by choice and think because they do not see the money flow, there is no money. As they say, if you do not recognise the product, it is you. It is quite unique really, they sell you and you buy versions of yourself back.
In my opinion, Steemit is much, much more honest than the other sites as what is generated by the platform is not hidden, it is trackable, transparent and even flaggable. Imagine flagging Facebook for taking too much value from their users?
I spend so little time at other sites now but when I do, all I see is the million little ways they are trying to screw me over, steal a little more of my attention, a little more of my time, get me to click one more link, view one more product, wait expectantly for likes... They have teams of people to manipulate me, to engage me. Honest?
This platform is flawed, its community is flawed, its ideas are flawed, its plans are flawed. It is us, flawed. The other sites offer a type of digital utopia of smiles and flowers to cover the flaws of our society, the greed, the scams. It is the biggest con of all. People blame society, WE are society. There is no one to blame but ourselves.
Steemit is a microcosm of the larger world where we can see all of the problems at a smaller scale but, largely out in the open. Here we have a chance to discover it, observe it and try to do something about it. We make many, many mistakes but as we move forward into the depths, it could just be that what we discover is the start of creating new models to use that clear the space for much better interactions, much better behaviours, much better experiences for many more people.
With an idealistic view, perhaps it will lead to less suffering and higher qualities of life for more of us. And perhaps those that benefit, will help others. Yeah, Steemit may not change the world, but perhaps we can.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
I am relatively new to Steemit and agree with you that there is great potential for good here. I too rarely visit Facebook and rather look through and enjoy articles here. The added incentive of getting something in return for your time is certainly no deterrent to that preference.
I was thinking about this and commenting on another post and include some of those random thoughts here.
Where ther is potential for great good and creation of "value" there is also great potential for abuse.
I am far from an expert on blockchain development and implementation, and may be mistaken, but it does seem that a very few have the vast majority of the power and benefit on Steemit as well as some other Crypto's, much as some would say with fiat currencies. Most would say that is the situation you are trying to avoid with cryptocurrencies.
Not sure how to regulate what sounds like abuse of the system, but unfortunately it does sound like some have learned how to game the system and screw up what seems to be a good idea.
Steem has potential and I feel it is a site with more going for it than a simple currency exchange, but like it or not, that is a huge draw to this platform.
As I tend to do, I woke up this morning again thinking about this. For steem ( or Sp or SBD or any cryptocurrency) to maintain "value" there needs to be a limited defined amount.
If a few control the majority available, then stability of that value and confidence in that crypto (or any currency for that matter) is to easily eroded by possible manipulation and collusion.
Would it be possible to limit an individual to a single account, and devise a system by which the individual could only own a certain percentage of the total available Steem? Beyond that point their earnings may have to go to help others, or they can maintain a smaller percentage of their earnings going forward beyond their limited total percentage, sort of like a tax (ugly word) above a certain level of ownership. That may help reduce the chance of collusion or manipulation.
Also could think about limiting the amount that an individual can upvote themselves.
Much like a newcomer, there would be only a limited amount to contribute to one's own posts, and you would have to depend on the community for support beyond that point, thus further encouraging more valuable posts.
I apologize if these thoughts are redundant or mirror others', I'm just having a flight of ideas this morning, however worthless they may be.
Personally I enjoy the creativity I see here...but honestly it does not hurt to know there is a potential reward as well.
Regardless, these are extremely important concepts for any crypto moving forward, or people like me will be more and more hesitant to invest more time or $ into the system due to lack of regulations and erosion of confidence.
Thanks for thinking about improvements.
@ohicklin
It kind of defeats the purpose of self governance when it starts to resemble the real world. A lot of the issues here are because people are comfortable being governed in other parts of their life and that is protected by regulation and law. Here, people need to self-govern and some have little control, while others freeze. There is still a long way to go though.
It is not my area (although it rarely stops me) but there are many great conversations on many of the topics you mentioned if you dig through the past.
but when is enough, enough?
how much should you be allowed to gather unto yourself before we, as a group, say look man, you have got more than your fair share, that is all the power any one person should have, and you have reached that limit.
consider World of Warcraft, if we allowed people to continue leveling up infinitely, there would be no point to a duel between characters, because some people would take that to the extreme and be level 2000. They would join a battleground, and just run around killing everyone they came close to, there would be no competition, it would eliminate the ability to have a competition, it would eliminate the fun.
When it comes to the real world, this is a apart of the real world, and we are again seeing the effects of having to much in the hands of too few. People like grumpycat that just downvote people that disagree with them, regardless of content. That is the problem, real issues can get squashed by those that disagree because it would effect them. Not because it is wrong, but because it would erode their positions of power, and at no point do I see that being a good thing, we should not allow people to become 'gods'. I've never met a person that I would ever allow to have such power, and that type of power does corrupt, we don't need a king, we don't need royalty, but that is what is happening here.
So for it to succeed, on a personal level for all people participating, there absolutely cannot be those with too much power. Let it be that no one can be 10000x greater than the least, that there must be at least 50 that share the power to sway large decisions.. I thought that was what the delegates where for... well no, but that is what I see as being a reasonable solution, people with power voted by the masses where no persons vote is worth more than any others.
grumpycat isn't flagging those who disagree, he is flagging those who flag him for taking too much from the reward pool. When is enough enough? you see it every day with bernie and others flagging haejin. You see it when authors are over rewarded. It happens here.
This is a very large social experiment and is only just starting.
Many of the kings and royalty here have been working hard for it you may find but, it is also due to them being early adopters, right place right time, right frame of mind means a lot. Many people I have brought in recently got introduced to it near when I started almost a year ago, why didn't they join then? Frame of mind and an unwillingness to discover. They are here now though, it is not too late.
This isn't a democracy thankfully for the masses are relatively uninformed. Check what is happening in the real world. Masses support that.
As said, this is a large experiment and a massive ongoing discussion which includes all, being part of the discussion is important but, that also means being willing to listen and understand. There are many (including me at times) who wants something a certain way without thinking through all of the knock-on consequences. Much of the current issues are issues backed by popular opinion.
It really is all very interesting to be a part of and has an exciting future ahead.
I've heard otherwise, from a few concerned individuals with enough power to get their voice heard. But i'm in no position to debate that.
true, and I do love being on the cutting ed
your not wrong. But I'm not sure that the masses are given an opportunity to hear what should be heard.
Take for example the 200 girls kidnapped in Chibok. What is crazy about this is that before this they where sending the girls home, telling them not to study western thought. But the boys? they killed the boys. There was intense outrage at the girls being kidnapped, but complete silence on the killing of the boys.
I'm positive the outrage would have been similiar had the media reported it, but it is not reported. In fact I found myself searching for 'the red pill movie' after I'd seen it on steemit and found it very difficult to find. I could find other articles published in the last day, but not that one. I finally used peekier.com and found it. So it isn't just not reported, it is actively being censored.
What I am saying is the masses are uninformed by the royality that exists today (they don't go by those names anymore, but they are) and I have interest in preventing such things from happening here. Already if one of these whales doesn't like what you have to say they can downvote you to a insanely low reputation, not based on truth, but vendette and I think that should be consider a problem.
Indeed, I agree with you. But I don't think that keeping people from being overpowered is ever going to fall under that category.
yes it is. I just hope that this issue is addressed, not that there won't be more, but I see this as being a major issue that will destroy steemit's small voices.
That is the rub. Overgovernance vs openness.
There is oportnity for abuse either way, and those who are willing to abuse.
Thanks.
I like your sentence: "Steemit didn't introduce "value" into social media, it just chose to include the users and make them shareholders rather than cash cows".
But for a lot of us, the money comes only second or third. Many of us are here for the opportunity to speak with people all around the world. To write and to read, to give comments and receive them. Maybe I speak for myself, but I know there are a lot who think the same.
I agree with you @clio, there is so much value here beyond the money but, people rarely scam in order to give a decent comment :)
I really enjoy it here and the steem is a bonus. I have learned so much from the community over the last 6 months I have really understood how to be part. Hopefully, I can help others be a part of it too.
I often feel people will have a degree of idealism on how things should work and its based simply on what they "wish" was true. Then as pretty much always happens reality steps in and mocks those ideals. Then the person with ideals takes to steemit to complain and gripe even though there was no actionable plan or basis in reality other than "I wish things were this way". Then the complaints and gripes make everything more toxic and come to contradict the very ideals they wanted to promote about the community.
My other favorite is how some would lecture many on how one should act on steemit and who and when its right to vote for and who and if its good to buy votes etc etc etc. Then as soon as price jumped they either outright switched or found other ways to "game" the system to try and save face from their original statement all the while their intent is the same.
Me, I just want to be entertained and help those I can help. Life is short, Steem hard!
I have been guilty of many things here but most of them are because I did not take the time to understand how the platform operates. I try not to do that but....
It is pretty entertaining.
well, we can see that the community is managing itself, abusers are getting flagged and frauds getting outed
that is indeed the big advantage of being on a blockchain where all data is stored, nothing is hidden...
there is no place to hide and some are finding that out
exiting times
As 'unpleasant' as it all is, I think it is great to be able to witness (and be part) of it as it is largely hidden from most people. I think that if people really understood what is happening in this world, they would welcome the discourse here readily.
Amen, bro!
I absolutely love how this place displays our ugliness in full spectrum. For those who are not completely blank minded, it makes us to think about these issues, start a discussion, point attention to them and maybe even change behavior of others in some way, shape or form.
I think that a large draw for the mindless media is because it takes attention away from the ugliness of ourselves, it gives us a way to blame society without looking in the mirror.
It is a challenge to keep up on Steemit, one should inform himself and do his best to be updated about what is going on in Steemit, how it works and how to bring your input in this system. I am since August 2017 and after difficult start when my post immediately were lost in this avalanche of new post, I had to think what to change to make my account more successful and that means to learn more about the system and to discover your own strength. Again we are talking about make people interested to learn and to improve themselves. I was very surprised when I found so many other people like me who are artists and that there are many who organising nice contests that helps newcomer to show himself and to make some friends. I know that many including myself have good international friends, who we can share our experience and support, as a nice side-effect we have payouts for stuf that we created and I think that is why Steem became so strong within last few weeks and it is only begining. It is a good platform, I am grateful to be a part of this community, may be everybody already heard many time but Steemit changed my life!
There are lots of avenues to take here but to get the most out of the experience, being a part of the community is the most rewarding. Even that takes many forms as you will come across no doubt. Some of the most despised are actually the most caring, some of the loved are the most toxic. It keeps it all very interesting :)
Love your post. I think you have much truth presented here, thank you.
What I'd like to add, is that I hope people are aware, that there are in fact people with an Agenda about what you believe, and they will upvote their own content via outside bots, and these bots/people will make a post appear more valuable than it really is. It is really hard to see it happening, it is only when you get involved with a cause that sits on the other side of the fence, then you see that honest discussion does not exist.
So I challenge you, everyone, to take the devil's advocate in controversial arguments and find out what kind of resistance you find. For my part I discussed the Flat Earth. I know most people's reaction to that, and I don't know the truth, what I do know is the information we have on the topic is far from a done deal. There are many strange inconsistencies that bother my mind, and when arguing with people here on steemit about the topic, the first thing that happened was I was downvoted for simply asking the questions, presenting the other side of the story. My arguments where not met with facts presented to destroy the ideas I had, but belittlement, name calling, and pseudoscience. There were attempts to talk over my head, there where attempts to make me feel stupid. But what I didn't find was proof. What I didn't find was a convincing argument.
Now I am not saying for you to get involved in that discussion, though I find it infinitely fascinating what people take for truth without truly getting involved and just accept on face value. But I'm sure there are other topics that are equally taboo, that are equally interesting to engage in should we find ourselves reading them.
So remember, what is popular isn't always true. And what is popular may only be popular because it is profitable for someone to have you believe it. And those that are profiting are never going to tell you the truth, they will tell you what they hope will keep you thinking how they want you to think. Those forces are out there, and they are insidious about how they go about it. Placing ads with cute children/animals and pretending it is just an accident. Maybe it is, but keep in mind that paying a highly followed users here to place ads is well within the realm of possibilities.
Being part of interesting discussions is a large part of what I enjoy here yet, discourse is a lost art in the world of twitter generations and trolls.
I have no problem taking the other side and rarely even post what is popular as there is so much of that already. What I have found here though is there are many willing to engage in decent conversations and who often disagree with me. I count them among my friends :)
agreed. I used to find it on reddit, but that has all changed. That is how I found steemit.
there are problems, but then were aren't there any? lol, when your dead, that is it.
so as long as you are alive, problems will exist, and if they didn't... what would we do with ourselves? infinitely bored, that is why we came.
glad I found steemit, a platform reaching for excellence.
I have to agree with you and I think it is well written. I like the word mining as it applies to cryptocurrencies. Here on Steemit you mine by making posts. On Facebook the shareholders mine by data mining your information and selling your privacy.
On the blockchain there is transparency. The problem with transparency is that there is too much data and average people either can't understand the flood of data or they are busy doing more important things with their lives rather than trying to study the system and the massive amount of data that it now creates.
There is so much news available that it makes it harder for people to figure what news is real and what is fake. In a transparent world, there is so much data out there that it becomes time-consuming to figure out what is relavent data and what is just noise.
Steem at 100 will end facebook domination :p
When steem hits a hundred, the competition for Steem will be intense. Ready?
yeah steemit is still beta , so its still in development, a great project with a interesting Idea but as you said once steemit passes a line there will be a lot of competition .
And one is for sure big companies like facebook,twitter already now about steemit and they will fight back.
I think most people take the steem here they get for granted as they think it will always be easy to get. The price iis currently 8.90. That means to buy a thousand steem it is going to cost 8900 dollars. to earn a thousand steem now?
you are absolutely right, we already see that people are trying to scam, spam or beg for votes , I just can immagine what will happen when more people will join.
Now there active user base is still small so its "easier to gain momentum" but to earn 1000 steam will take you a lot of time even if your content is great.
Steem is a project where the community needs to step up otherwise it can fall apart. Just my 2 cents
I think the reward calculation needs to change and factor in author reputation.
A part of the problem is people have been buying their reputations through upvotes.