Is the Steem social contract being abused? Steem funds are to be used to sponsor unrelated projects.
Do you think it's all right to explicitly fund commercial projects completely unrelated to Steem by writing short posts aimed just at this: moving funds out of Steem to other projects.
We have an example of this happening here:
https://steemit.com/bitshares/@jonnybitcoin/bitshares-adverts-on-facebook-flash-fundraiser
For me, this is unacceptable and clearly against Steem's social contract. I believe Steem funds are meant to be spent only on things which directly or indirectly contribute to the value of the Steem platform. We could make exceptions for charities, but not for commercial for-profit projects.
I've tried to convince @jonnybitcoin, the author of the fundraiser, to revise his actions by at least adding a message in his campaign indicating that funds originate from Steem. But he refused, as he believes he's doing nothing wrong.
Please let me know what you think.
Maybe I'm wrong - I just wanted to raise the issue and find the answer. Maybe my interpretation of the Steem social contract is too strict.
EDIT: For me, it's not really about those $700 that are going to leak from Steem in this case. I think our integrity is on the line. Is Steem going to uphold its core values or is it just a private club willing to bend to external interests of the biggest shareholders?
How do the people who state outright that they are using the earnings from their posts on steemit to fund a vacation (or anything else) contribute to the development of steem any more than jonnybitcoin? Your logic is flawed.
I personally believe that communities are SUPPOSED to garner support from all members of steemit if possible. It makes sense that they would approach the largest bagholders (who locked away their bags for a long time for the super power of being able to give others funding) first.
I upvote quality content that helps gridcoin's community, peercoin's community, ethereum's community, dashes, community...and the list goes on and on. I think this is precisely the kind of stuff steemit exists for! How many times have we not been able to pay others to help us? Now all we need to do is upvote them!
I think my logic is sound. People who post to fund their vacations share their stories. They don't come and say: "I want to go to X, please give me the money". They take the money but give us their stories in return.
Similarly, we don't see short posts like "I need a new car, please upvote" gaining any support. If they did get support we would think something is really wrong with Steem.
Imagine this: a Bittrex (or Poloniex) shareholder makes a short post similar to @jonnybitcoin's to get funds for Bittrex/Poloniex campaign on Facebook. And he gets upvotes from whales who we know for sure are significant Bittrex/Poloniex shareholders. Is it OK? Wouldn't you think there is a clear conflict of interest taking place.
Or imagine this: I create a BitShares worker proposal to fund Steem banner campaign on Facebook. And the proposal goes through becasue it gets support from BitShares whales who are also Steem shareholders. What does @jonnybitcoin do when he realizes what's going on?
EDIT: I guess the moral from this incident is this: if @jonnybitcoin had heeded to my pleas to add a disclaimer about funds originating from Steem, he would have gotten significantly more funds (as he would not have gotten the downvotes - at least not from me). Both communities would benefit.
As it is now, he got less funds and there will be no publicity for Steem. Both communities lose out as a result.
The example you use is very improbable. Bitshares whales would be unlikely to fund steem ads on fb.
But as shown steem whales are happy to fund bitshares ads because alot of those steem whales are also BTS whales. The difference I think is because steem rewards would have gone to another post if not mine. Where as in bitshares rewards only go to those actively chosen.
Its a touchy subject that should be decided on a case by case basis.
For instance, bleeding out steem to feed the world for homeless is a fix with a short term gain, at the expense of killing the platform in the long term.
I think I'll elaborate in my next blog post. I feel a catharsis coming on.. :)
I'm glad you are asking this question. With regard to Bitshares, I do agree with it, and I did upvote it. Bitshares will end up helping steem users so they have decentralized way to change STEEM into BITCOIN, or even USD directly in the future via gateways. So it's a little different.
Bitshares also lost one of its core developers, Dan Larimer, who founded the steem blockchain, who claims he will return to Bitshares possibly at a future date. Soon the two are related, just not in an obvious fashion.
I agree that charities might qualify as noble exceptions. And I also agree that it's a touchy subject - I believe I know the answer in this case but I'm not sure really what the consensus is.
That's my dream too: Steem and BitShares working together for the same userbase. But the thing is by sponsoring BitShares directly like this we are abusing intentions stated in Steem's whitepaper and thus we hurt Steem's image. We help BitShares but hurt Steem - that's not a healthy relationship.
And by saying "abusing intentions stated in Steem's whitepaper" I mean this: the whitepaper says that Steem is a mechanism which constantly redistributes funds from those who contribute less to the system to those who contribute more. @jonnybitcoin's post clearly does not meet this criteria - he just asks for money without even trying to contribute anything to Steem.
You said:
Then you said:
However, Bitshares will contribute MORE to the steem system, by aiding users who will obtain their first virtual bank account, and first virtualized decentralized exchange, to transact with Steem.
So in this specific instance, promoting Bitshares via Steem is not against the whitepaper, and should be supported.
I think you're on the right track. Just you and I differ with regard to Bitshares. It's a bad example to promote your case.
It would be much nicer to have this same discussion with a more flagrant and easy to spot "abuse". Like hey everybody, vote up my post, and I'll get a tattoo on my butt. That's something that doesn't help the eco system evolve, or contribute to the benefit of the steemit community. That's obvious. It's your post. Have the last word. Glad we could hash it out a little. :)
If it was a Steem tattoo, I'd upvote it myself!
So this is my last word: BitShares has its own mechanism to raise funds (worker proposals) and @jonnybitcoin doesn't give a shit about Steem (that's my assumption - I might be wrong!) and is just using his private relationships with the whales to get some funds out of Steem. Funds for a good cause but raised in bad way.
This is quite pathetic - those whales are really rich (in terms of Steem), earn a lot each day by running their witness nodes and they could really do the BitShares fundraising in a much better style.
As it is, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Nothing to be proud of.
In my eyes this is subject of one's individual sense of loyalty. But when bigger picture is considered, Steem is meant to be the an ultimately democratic platform, where you can upvote whatever you want, write whatever you want and downvote whatever you want. Thus telling people what they should and shouldn't write is not exactly in line with these assumptions.
Also note that you are allowed to spend your dollars made on Steem on whatever you want including guns, hookers and all, and although I understand that the very post is trying to raise money for some external cause and has no other value, no one can force anyone to upvote or downvote it if they don't find it meaningful or harmful.
But of course, you can campaign against it like you just did - that is also your sacred right. But if Steem decided to ban this by definition, started removing or blocking posts like that, or having official committees deciding what goes and what doesn't, I would be very alarmed, even if the causes happened to be completely unrelated, for example some babe getting a new botox implant ;) And I do get that you are not advocating for that, not to mention that it is by definition impossible to censor stuff here, at least theoretically.
Still, Steem has to pull its weight through all the freedom it introduces - that would be my closing line on this one.
So would I. If Steem ever acquires a committee able to block posts, I'll be gone. My post was only meant to counteract @jonnybitcoin's post and raise the issue of a clear conflict of interest taking place.
Also, I wanted to prevent this perception from spreading:
It's completely untrue (and I don't think BitShares is a failed investment) but we need to be aware that perception is not a rational beast - it just needs one small incident to be able to flourish.
Yeah I get you :) As long it's just an opinion like any other, its all good. Like you said, perception is hardly rational, everyone has their own version of it, so there's little else one can do except campaign for the outcomes they're after. Even if they seem to be talking rubbish in the process (which I'm not trying to judge in this case).
While I'm not participating in any such behavior, I have to ask about this social contract.
I've always found the term “social contract”, as a contract is something that is mutually agreed upon between two or more parties. Did you sign anything saying what you could or couldn't buy with your Steem dollars? I didn't. And clearly, the people who upvoted the project were in favor of the fundraiser. They have every right to support it just as you have every right to oppose it. But there is no "way things should be" -- especially when there's no actual contract with clear terms agreed to by all parties involved. I'm sure there are plenty of victims of sexual abuse who will tell you the dangers of appealing to the idea of "implied consent."
If there's behavior/ideas on the platform that I don't agree with, I can choose to 1) comment, 2) write a rebuttal post, 3) flag it if I find it abusive, 4) mute the user, 5) any combination of those four things, or 6) just move on.
I appreciate that you are passionate and wrote a rebuttal post for something you don't agree with; I just want to dispel this idea of a social contract as it simply doesn't exist. There's beauty in this... that users aren't controlled or subject to censorship is one of the major benefits of Steemit over other media platforms IMO. Cheers @innuendo. Thanks for making your voice heard. ✌️
Actually, it does exit. There can be no blockchain without a social contract around it. It can be implicit or explicit but it exists in some form. You can read more about it here. Ethereum is a good case showing what happens when you neglect this issue.
It's a problem I raised a couple of months ago - I argued that sooner or later we will be in trouble if we don't come up with some sort of more formal constitution or manifest or social contract. As a result, @dantheman has even prepared a draft but the issue was then dropped as focus has moved to development.
How can any contract exist without the signatures and mutual agreement of all parties?
In case of Steem, the contract is declared by the founders' public statements and the whitepaper. For example: immutability of the blockchain as far as censorship is concerned is one of the publicly declared axioms for Steem.
But you do have a valid point - founders' intentions should have been written down long time ago and each new user should have been asked to acknowledge them when registering a new account.
Without having this in place we ask for trouble. It's just a matter of time when this community hits a big dilemma and splits. A more formal social contract cannot fully prevent it (as it's hard to predict all future dilemmas) but at least this is the most we can do. Also, it's easier to decide which part of the split is more "classic" and sticks to the original intentions of the founders.
I think a use case as a Kickstarter for unrelated projects would be good for Steem even if some Steem dollars are drained away.
Problems.There is an unusual situation where many voters are also interested in success of bit shares. A "related party" issue. This could be abused.
Note 14min $10
Agree with you. If I were to post a public thread on a centralized forum aimed at convincing people to come use a decentralized forum with a reward system for content creation/curation, my thread would likely be locked and/or I would get banned.
@jonnybitcoin 's idea not only does that, but takes money directly out of steem. This would be more akin to me poaching affiliates from a centralized site. For instance say a cooking forum makes some form of revenue by having users sign up for particular meal services such as blue apron, but I posted a thread asking users to sign up through me for a different food service. How long before a forum moderator axes my thread? Don't take advantage of a censor-less blockchain site in its infancy by pulling money out of steem to fund something else.
curious, did you downvote his thread?
Yes, I did. After @jonnybitcoin had bluntly refused to consider my suggestion. It's all in the comments below the fundraiser post.
I think its entirely fine to use steemit as a fundraising platform for commercial projects. No one has a gun to their head when it comes to the upvote button. If you disagree with those practices, don't upvote those posts.
That fact that it's possible to do something does not imply that is legal to do it. And I mean "legal" from the social contract's point of view.
So the real question is this: does Steem's social contract allow this?
As you said in your other comments: the steem "social contract", whatever it is, hasn't been defined in any way. I wouldn't make accusations of people abusing it, when they are being totally open in their post about where the money is going. If people feel it is abuse of the platform, they don't have to upvote, and can even downvote. I feel that this post can create misunderstandings among people who don't necessarily understand all the inner workings of Steem (it can be complicated).
Taking whatever money you earn from posts cannot be abuse of the platform. It might be abuse of people's trust if the writer lied about where they were going to use the money and then used it differently. But that's not what is being discussed here. Steemit is designed to reward you with money from the posts, and it is allright to take that money out of the platform, by design.
It hasn't been explicitly defined by still it exits. Lack of censorship on the Steem blockchain is the best example. Has this aspect been formally defined?
Steem is not meant to spend funds just on anything the shareholders want. The part of the social contract that matters in this case, has been clearly described in the whitepaper: Steem is a mechanism which constantly redistributes funds from those who contribute less to the system to those who contribute more.
@jonnybitcoin's post clearly does not meet this criteria - he just asks for money without even trying to contribute anything to Steem. He is just making use of the fact that some Steem whales are BitShares shareholders.
But I have to admit this: it's not really @jonnybitcoin's fault. He is free to post anything he wants. The fault lies with those who upvoted it in an attempt to suck money out of Steem into their private investment which is unrelated to Steem.
i agree- it goes against the purpose of what we are doing here! Upvoted
Well Steem borrows some stuff from Bitshares (they both use the Graphene blockchain tech), so future developments on that project could be mutually beneficial.
No, this is not accurate. Steem and BitShares share the same codebase, just as PeerPlays, Muse, Play and other projects. But you cannot say that Steem is based on BitShares.
You've amended your comment (initially you said "Steem is based on BitShares") but my point still stands. We are not being asked to fund BitShares development. Instead, we are being asked to use Steem funds to promote BitShares on facebook.
@jonnybitcoin's post has made hundreds of dollars because we have a clear conflict of interests: we have whales (mostly witnesses) who are major BitShares shareholders - I guess that's why they've supported the fundraiser.
I have amended my comment prior to seeing your reply, and yes, your point still stands, and its a good point. Perhaps I am just biased towards Bitshares, even though I don't hold any.
I do hold BitShares (about 600k BTS), have spent countless hours on the BitShares forum and I really want it succeed. But not by ruining the integrity of Steem.