Be Careful, Steem!
Diversity may be the hardest thing for a society to live with, and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be without. - Williame Sloane Coffin Jr.
Human beings love categorization. It helps us to organize our lives, to differentiate between good and bad, right and wrong, and to position ourselves within the world that surrounds us.
One of the great benefits of free societies is that these categories are usually not subject to economical wealth or status. Whether one's opinion can be heard or not, neither depends on their financial background nor requires a special promotion. In theory we have all the same opportunities.
In a theoretical free society, all individuals act voluntarily, having the freedom to obtain the power and resources to fulfill their own potential.
Now having a closer look at the current structure of the Steem eco-system, I wonder if actually ALL individuals have access to that freedom. Certain statements published on this blockchain during the past weeks make me believe that we're gradually drifting towards a two-tiered society where the degree of freedom you might achieve here clearly depends on the status (education, money, culture) you bring with you when joining this place.
It seems that we're not given the same opportunities at all.
It's time to talk about the inconvenient truth!
Picture kindly provided by pixabay.com
Are we true to ourselves?
Considering the current structures of the Steem eco-system I wonder how much of the ideological values we originally defined for this community are still valid.
How much of Dan Larimers vision to 'build free market solutions to secure life, liberty and property' are we still living with Steem?
There is a visible trend to equate financial possibilities with value creation, to differentiate between investors and 'normal users' and to categorize community members into developers (= smart) and non-developers (= simple-minded).
Is that really the picture we want to draw?
Statements on the Steem blockchain like the following ones support that assumption:
The content doesn't bring the value to the entire system, it's the investors and speculators.
Re-distribution of power from large accounts to smaller accounts can only happen if small stakeholders power up all they have.
You can follow the progress of Steemit Inc's projects on Github but a normal user would never understand what's written there.
Doesn't sound that like elitism to you?
To be honest, it scares me that these type of statements are apparently condoned by a wide audience.
What about people who haven't had the possibilities to learn how to code, but who know how to use this blockchain in order to create outstanding content? What about people who don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest into cryptocurrencies, but who possess extraordinary skills and talents that enable them to inspire, motivate and support others? What about people who are great community builders just because they have a strong social consciousness?
Apparently we want to keep these people out of our 'free community' because they're not rich or nerdy enough.
Still we need them to brighten our numbers...
Ned Scott on Twitter
The growth of this network is obvious. With the forecast in mind there will be 1 million Steem accounts in the near future.
How many of them will be actually 'valuable' to us? How many will be 'free'?
Let's face it: we're pretending to sell something we can only provide to a small minority.
In the Steem eco-system the 0,23% largest stakes hold 91,47% of the total voting power.
In absolute numbers: The 1,719 heaviest stakes hold 345,196 MVESTS.
Cumulative distribution of voting power in the Steem network by @arcange
Number of users according to their voting power
I wonder how these numbers would look like if we didn't categorize people according to their financial power?
What if we defined users according to their real contribution to the network?
What if we called them investors, developers, content creators, community builders and curators instead?
Half of world's wealth is in hands of 1% of the population. In the Steem eco-system the disequilibrium is even more drastic. Does that make us feel comfortable?
Money talks.
I invite you take a look at Steemit's marketing claim which has changed a couple of times during the past (almost) two years. In the early beginnings of Steem, people were invited to join the network with these words:
Your voice is worth something.
Maybe some people realized that this statement didn't really apply for the majority of users. Now it faded into the background and made room for a new (more aggressive) claim:
Cheeky question: Does that implicate 'No money, no talking?'
Well considering the distribution of power in this system and assuming that visibility highly depends on financial and educational background, the inverted statement is quite precise.
It really seems that the original vision of Steem has made room for a completely new one.
Do we agree on that direction? Are we fine with a two-tiered community? Do we want a community that is clearly divided into rich and poor? Is that our vision of Steem?
Let's repeat the initial quote now and read it carefully:
Diversity may be the hardest thing for a society to live with, and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be without. - Williame Sloane Coffin Jr.
How important is diversity in the Steem community? Let's talk about it! The comments section is yours.
Thanks for your interest and time,
Marly -
PS: I leave you with the following statement, being pretty aware of the fact that this article is touching a series of unpopular beliefs. Still I feel safe :-)
Thanks for your valuable time!
This blog was launched at the end of July 2016
aiming to provide stories for open-minded
people who enjoy living on the edge of their lives,
stepping out of comfort zones, going on adventure,
doing extreme sports and embracing the new.
Welcome to the too-much-energy-blog!
PS: Don't forget that this is a troll-free zone.
Original content. Quotes both found on quotefancy (1) and (2).
Of course not.
One thing people rarely talk about wrt the Steem ecosystem is that the very nature of the long tail means that most people posting content will not earn much money. It's our job as curators and voters to make sure that that long tail is as fat as possible, but we'll never repeal basic human nature. Catering to the lowest common denominator will always yield the most profit.
Do we agree on that direction? Are we fine with a two-tiered community? Do we want a community that is clearly divided into rich and poor? Is that our vision of Steem?
I think you've totally misunderstood what is going on here. It's not reasonable to conflate stake-weighted voting, which was indeed part of the initial design, with a two-tiered system. No guarantees were ever built into the protocol that anyone would earn money for their content. In terms of payouts, the golden rule still applies - s/he who has the gold makes the rules. This has been codified in the Steem platform since it launched. If anything, the switch to linear rewards to fatten the long tail further advances an egalitarian angle, yet you're spinning a narrative here that the platform has "moved away" from some diverse vision, when in fact steps have been taken explicitly to address the tyranny of the majority.
The best thing about Steem is not the rewards. It's that with little or no stake, you or anyone can post something that will be preserved for all time, available for all who are interested to read. It has fuck-all to do with rewards or money. Don't be distracted by the money, or the tagline, or the payouts. This is a platform that gives everyone a voice.
That's your recommendation, seriously? 'Don't be distracted by the money.'
Money talks - but don't be distracted by the money
Ehm....
I didn't conflate stake-weighted voting and a two-tiered system, I rather identified a direct correlation between both. Less than 1% of the Steem users decide on more than 90% of the voting power which definitely leads to a two-tiered system deviding the community into those who have influence and those who don't.
Linear rewards have considerably contributed to a better distribution of rewards (end of the value added chain), that's undoubted. Still that didn't address the source of the problem (starting point of the chain): ensuring the equality of opportunity for everybody who joins the platform and is willing to contribute.
What's your take on the sweat equity principle defined in the Steem white paper? Shouldn't we take that too seriously either - like the money?
Exactly. Some of the gentlemen in this thread are forgetting that Steem obtains value from proof-of-brain. No proof-of-brain, no value. No value, no archiving in the long run. No archiving in the long run, no voice in the long run.
The issue is that to have a visible voice here, you need content and stake, or content and have somebody with stake curate. That would work if the history of the platform was a bit different.
(For those talking about voice, ignoring rewards, etc . . . take note that even the founder, Ned, thinks the trending quality is lacking.)
Another important adding, thank you @tibra!
I'm glad this statement is at the top of the thread now :)
This it what the Steem white paper says:
We're not seeing much of that in reality. But there are lots of new projects in the pipeline that might bring the needed solutions, just thinking about SMT Oracles for instance.
You're drawing an arbitrary line at 90% to define your "haves" and "have nots" of influence. Turns out that you can make a post and actually exert influence (not rewards - influence) with your ideas with almost no SP at all.
The partition you describe is nonexistent.
Who is 'you' in this case? Me? I have been here for 18 months, have almost 7K followers and rep 72, I don't believe you're comparing my account with the majority?
Influence requires visibility, and the design of Steem absorbes low-rated content like a sponge and makes it disappear. I often have trouble in finding my own content. If you don't remember the title or at least parts of it, it's impossible to find it - unless you wanna scroll down your feed a couple of hours.
What do you think why the user retention is at 12% right now? Do people need to lower their expectations? Is that the whole secret?
Quite the opposite; the design of Steem makes all posts persist forever, regardless of editing, votes, or flags. It is explicitly designed so that nothing can disappear. This is a blatantly false statement.
Where did you get that figure? It's not accurate. Spreading misinformation helps no one.
You're addressing the wrong person. If you scrolled down this thread you'd see that it wasn't me who came up with these numbers.
hi @sneak - I tend not to spread inaccurate information, and I am not the only one that has reported on retention figures. Lol at times 12% seem generous. Sure from those that registered last feb the retention is only 6%
https://steemit.com/steemit/@paulag/if-you-joined-steemit-in-february-2017-then
And now... silence...:-)
Thanks for providing the detailed numbers @paulag!
You were pretty right, @sneak! My numbers were not accurate. The retention is even worse: https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@paulag/retention-rates-on-steemit-steemit-business-intelligence
The next time you decide to critize people, better do your homework.
Have you seen the latest EOS performance by the way?
Good luck!
@sneak I think the bigger problem is that some whales aren't actually using their curation power to fatten this tail.
When you have a voting weight of over 2M SP you'd expect the voting power to be much lower on a regular basis.
But instead, you just see fat votes on some content creators, rather than more votes across the whole cross-section of users. The rich are getting richer.
As far as the long tail goes, we are very long tail as very few posts even have enough quality to reach the Top 10 in Google Search results anyway - https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@just2random/steemit-vs-medium-vs-quora-competitive-analysis
@surfermarly Maybe the remuneration is just a reflection of the quality of writing. And the most used tag on Steemit is photography, so maybe they don't like writing anyway.
Everyone has the freedom to say as they please, but only the community can deem it's worth. And those whale graphs are misleading, not all whales in those graphs are active curators anyway. Maybe I need do some meaningful analysis on this.
The lacking delegation policies have been criticized already a couple of times, and you perfecly showed the reason why.
Asher @abh12345 has pulished an interesting article about that recently, analyzing the voting behaviour of @curie, @dtube and @utopian-io: https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@abh12345/voting-analysis-is-curie-still-the-best-community-support-account
As long as the voting power is in hands of few we need them to curate more towards that long tail.
A more detailed analysis on that would be definitely appreciated. I'd love to read it!
Thanks @surfermarly for the mention!
If you can rustle up some high level details (accounts, comparisons, data types), I'd be happy to take a look. :D
@just2random was the one who proposed providing more data :-)
The more information I have about this blockchain the less I enjoy participating.
There was a case a few days ago, a brand-new user got 4 videos in a row, including the #introduceyourself one, upvoted by Dtube.
But in this case, she is no insta or YT superstar. Just a normal gal. Then, many whales upvoted, not sure if because of the huge possible reward, or some other shady reasons. New to steem, knew already how to format properly and even use some advanced html tools, claimed she was a crypto enthusiast since long, but when asked to show her previous social media work on the subject, she replied, that there is none and that Steem will be her place to share on cryptos.
We need a clear picture on what is going on, looks like whales are bating on crews to bring "new faces" to the platform, look organic on the outside, but are rotten on the inside. I lost a 10% of my upcoming rewards, not due to flags, but to the re-distribution of the reward pool. I guess the new apps having 2M SP are making a difference.
Same as always, rich people gets richer at our expense. At the end blockchain or not, crypto so far is not proving to be any new financial revolution or access for the poorer to wealth. Just take a look at Forbes new crypto billionaires, none of them was poor before.
We still can make a difference, we have people working to make it more equal, truly giving tools to minnows to improve themselves, and much more. There is still hope.
@ned if EOS can have an eternal ICO creating billions out of thin air, what stops us from implementing SMTs and expand the reward pool? Is it not that the main concern for many users?
Prime example. @dtube hits full votes on the big guns who are migrating over from Youtube, bu the new user posting their first ever video gets sweet FA. Just look at the trending feed...all bigshot 'social media influencers' (yawn) bragging about their followers and getting hundreds of dollars in upvotes from assorted whales. It stinks.
Just as I said! Money or NONE ....I have a silent Or loud Voice and everything I write about is meant to be for the future generations, for the children of my children’s children......They will know what I feel, think and what music I listened to, what makes me sad or happy and where I ate my favourite food.
Those thoughts kept me going without complaining much.
The rewards in SBD/Steem a wonderful bonus I also enjoy!
Follow4follow people? Not with me because I don’t care!
I am HERE on my “Mammasitta” mission, telling MY Story.......
Making HIStory!
If the attention was completely irrelevant for you, why would you pay voting bots then to get more of it? Just saw your post on the trending page and then had a quick look at your wallet :-)
For us it was much easier since we joined early. New users have very few chances to ever reach the reputation we have. It's rather about being heard and seen than being paid here.
She doesn't say it's irrelevant. Her main motive seems to be the fact that her voice and words are stored but there also is the part:
You're great at repeating other people's statements, what's your take though?
You asked why she uses upvote bots if the money is irrelevant to her. I cited where she says it's not irrelevant.
I thought that citation would answer you question why she does use them ;)
No, it doesn't answer my question, but thanks.
Marly!
You sound very “snappy”!
It’s a wellknown human reaction to be “judge-mental” without knowing the whole story. At least you could give me the chance, before you jump and scratching eyes!
You do sound like an idealist but I think you are not.
You enjoy the money as much as we all do. It’s an investment for me for my pension if I am lucky.
“Use Steemit as you wish!
I do the same!”
That’s a part of Dan’s vision.
BTW, I am really glad to end up with such huge mistake sending my SBD to a bot.
It opened my eyes!
I am actually amazed what can happen, when you would like to try out bots, to see how others end up in the trending page, I have never seen anyways.
I planned to send 5 SBD, to see what happens but simply made a huuuuge mistake (while in bed with strepthroat) forwarded my entire funds at once.
I asked @appreciator to return my funds and was told this >>>>
You can go back on my wallet and will see that I rarley boost my posts. My minnow followers are the most loyal ones and I am “proud” of their votes and 15 USD payout otherwise dear @surfermarly
Guess what, I never ever powered down and rarly had one day, without posting.
I started to move SBD to bittrex a little while ago, when it was up at 7-10. Usually I powered up and up and more up.
You just judged me by 1 ! only one article Mar Ly! I don’t think you do know me enough
I didn't judge, just asked :-) I only want to learn, that's all.
I know that you made a mistake sending your whole amount of SBD, I read the article and comments. I hope they'll send it back to you!!!
Good!
Is it complacent to know that new users may not reach your success story? I hope the answer is not, otherwise your whole posts makes no sense to me.
@mammasita read this post on why bid-bots make no sense if you expect to make a profit on them. link
Pls kindly upvote me @kemkem. Thanks
Just took a look on your account @sneak. I would be satisfied with your earnings. Since money isn't that important to you, I am sure we can swap accounts? :-)
Haha! Don't be distracted by the money @brainnipper!!! :-D
Right, and actually also 'normal users' are investors: they are investing their precious time!
Something is getting out of wack because the moment I loose my passion, I hear my instincts warning me. “maybe you are at the wrong place”. I hope the trusting 6th sense will guide me in the right direction but somehow the vision of “STEEM” got damn blurry!
Money talks?! Hell yeah but even if there is NONE, you still got your VOICE!
I liked it so much better when this place was not so much about “business” and who’s rich or poor. It was about idealistic, passionate people who connected through their stories, talent and skills.
#soulconnections!
Bingo.
https://steemit.com/steemfest/@massivevibration/what-a-fun-night-and-groupie-moments-sneak-ing-and-dj-ing-around-in-lisbon-at-the-steemfest-2-photographic-series-part3
Im glad you are still @sneak ing around 💃
But that can be applied, can't it? I mean you can pretty much post whatever you want, you only can be flagged. - If you don't care about the money anyways, where is the problem?
Yes! It can be applied! We have our VOICE!
I never said I do not care about “Money” I just would not sell my SOUL for it and my life proves it. That’s another story.
I think you got me wrong, I feel the same way you do regarding this ;)
Ich habe Dich gut verstanden.
Her voice is exactly what she is using with this post.
It was CLEAR and LOUD!
We're still here, and we still connect. Now it's time to get some influence back :-)
Big hugs sweetie! :-*
I never stopped connecting, building a valuable community step by step.
I welcome this conversation and have some points to add.
First of all I am not a developer, so that makes me simple minded. In addation I have no $$$ to invest. I have also NOT powered up everything all of the time, in fact I have sold some steem and sbd.
A recent analysis that I carried out shows that success on steemit is NOT dependent on SP owned and there is a greater correlation between Reputation and account growth than SP and account growth. ( even though I am simple minded I understand that correlation is not = causation)
I have put serious effort and time into Steemit and feel I have been rewarded and my expectations have been more than filled. I believe that steemit does offer the FREEDOM you have mentioned above and part of the problem is not Steemit, but the people using it.
Distribution is a problem, and the initial distribution is what caused it, but two tiers are being created and here is why I think it is happening.
A new person joins steemit, thinking they can make money posting content rather quickly. their expectations are not met and they leave steemit. Retention is only about 12%. If only 12% of people stick with it, and allow themselves the time to grow their reputation and their account, then there will always be an uneven spread because 88% of accounts will never grow. What would be interesting as an analysis is to exclude the 88% of users that dont bother putting in the effort from data and then look at the distribution.
Simple an all as I am, I don't think its hard to understand that if only 12 % of registered users are actively using steemit and trying hard, the the wealth will remain within this 12%
Therefore I would say that Steemit need to address retention, not distribution.
The bigger issue for me is corporate governance and controlling power being in the hands of a centralized organisation (Steemit Inc). I am actually looking at misterdelegation today, but when the CEO of Steemit Inc, abuses his own power and use Misterdelegation to upvote his own comments then there is a serious corporate governance issue.
Steemit Inc is a private centralized company. Here lies our problem. Lack of corporate governance, leadership , accountability and a show of continuous 'self supply' and insider trading. Where else would this be accepted????????????
Thanks for reading the opinion of a simple minded but successful steemain......Power to the People - Steem on
Hey @paulag! Thanks for jumping in! :-)
You know I'm a fan of your work, so it's great that you add some of your knowledge here.
That's great. Still in order to grow repuation what you need is visibility. What do you think is the best way of providing new accounts with more attention? Do we have to improve curation towards smaller accounts?
12% is really heavy! How could we close the gap between expectations and reality? Is it an educational problem we might address already during the onboarding process, e.g. providing more tutorials?
Wouldn't a better distribution help to improve retention after all? Or is it just an expectation management issue?
With regards to Steemit Inc I actually don't have a really deep insight into how much influence they effectively have e.g. when it comes to decide over new hardforks. We would have to ask the witnesses. @lukestokes mentioned this being a possible issue during his interview with David Pakman. So I guess there are some valid points. They may not have any intentions to abuse their status, but the fact that they could might scare some people here.
By the way Ned removed his self-vote, so I think it was a mistake using the company's account in that situation, but he corrected it then.
Power to the people, haha! Yeah :-)
why are people replying on Steemit to grow their visibility? On steemit we have the opportunity to share our posts on other social media platforms and generate our own traffic and our own following, but steemit is not being used that way. If you make a post on Wordpress, do you expect wordpress to market it for you? yes you can get followers via wordpress and you will get a ping or notification when someone you follow makes a post.
Why should steemit provide new accounts with more visibility? Having worked online now for over 10 years I have had to grow my own following using social media marketing. If you open a shop, you will advertise it right? its not steemits responsibility to provide marketing or traffic to YOUR content. Authors need to take responsibility for their visibility. The organic steemit markets is what? 65K active accounts? that's not very many people to market to....
"wouldn't a better distribution help to improve retention after all?"
Interesting question. If more peoples were making $$ retention would be better as this seems to be the expectation gap. A wider distribution would accommodate that, however bad content will still not succeed
@ned only removed his vote because he was shamed into it. Good corporate governance within Steemit Inc would prevent this happening in the first place. How many steemit inc staff accounts are part of a voting circle and what I would call - self supply. No one can answer that question because steemit inc is not transparent - we do not have a list of staff accounts. Compare this to a public company where vesting interest must be declared.
I share all my posts in my other social media networks and bring traffic to steemit like that since 1.5 years and I know that a lot of others are doing the same. Why do you believe that doesn't happen here?
Who are you talking about when you say steemit? @steemit or Steemit Inc or the community?
In general we're all responsible for our own doings, no doubt about that. Still if a company advertises with claims such as Money talks or Your voice is worth something then this roots certain expectations. I've been working in marketing and sales for 12 years now, and the number one rule I've learned in all the companies I've been working for is:
Are we true to ourselves if we advertise steemit using the word money? There's a huge gap between message and reality, and that's why we have only 12% user retention. That's my personal theory.
I have absolutely no idea. Why don't you ask them? :-)
you share you post and I share mine, but ask all the new people and I can assure you that most of them don't.
You make a very very solid point, don't ever lie to your customers
Did you recently shared a blog post where the 12% vs. 88% are backed by numbers/stats? Sneak doesn't believe these numbers are true (see comment above). Would be nice to show some evidence :-)
thanks for pinging me @surfermarly - I have replied to @sneak above
perfect analysis - address the retention is a key challenge. Would be interesting to see how many great creators of value we loose amongst the 88% quitters - retention of the best would be great - assume 60% of the 88% are spammers or scammers anyway.
I see the evolution of the steemit ecosystem mirroring the development of every free market economy. Rich & Poor. You may notice the bellowings of revolution from below in the form of "unionization" among the minnows about now and the elite taking very little notice. All and all it is a great study in capatalism. It will have its bumps and bruises but those willing to work hard have an opportunity just like in any other economy. Unfortunately, the early adopters and some of the lucky investors have an advantage. But they also have a responsibility to encourage those who need it. Members like you @surfermarly are exactly what this ecosystem needs.
Sweet! First of all thanks for the great compliment. With power comes responsibility - agreed!
Now that you mention the unionization of the minnows: it sometimes reminds me of the Late Middle Ages where the folk started to rebel against the king. The only difference is that we have several kings here :-)
Thanks for your valuable thoughts!
That's exactly what I think of @surfermarly . It will be interesting to see if the kings take not of this and do what it takes to avoid some of the pains from the past. Unfortunately we have signs like this all over our economies and nobody takes those steps. You can always count on Human Greed to ruin things. But again, members like you are trying to change that so the effort is appreciated.
You as the user are better off when organized, yes, at the moment. Not only that, but what the site also needs is scale. A small system like this one, in terms of numbers of curators, doesn't behave the same when it's larger. Networks are very sensitive to scale, in their intermediate internal states and behavior.
I had one idea that I recently suggested to Ned, regarding how to improve things, how to quickly bring in more highly vested curators with the right perspective to reward more content producers, share value . . . )
@surfermarly wrote a great post. I agree 100% with it. Problem exist to be solved, as John Wheeler said. Therefore problems ought be posed to be solved.
I suggest, it's not quite capitalism per se. It's more path dependence; — the site is a consensus economy, but it has very few large curators. Why — because it only recently became popular. That and the low number of miners besides the devs at the very beginning. The issue becomes, then, that only 10% of any group ever participate much — for instance, curate for quality. Which is exactly what we see with the large stake holders. 4—5 actively curate or delegate to those who do bother.
It's unionization but also it's not. The search cost on a large content site is very high. Search is stake weighted, visibility is convoluted by ordered stake patterns, creating a feedback.
Few users have the time to perform an above threshold search, and the probability that they are also the same users who have the stake to upvote much is . . . The result is status quo is maintained.
Therefore organizing is quite beneficial to all. There's not a bargaining conflict, I would say. The newer users don't have a market position; groups of users posting in organized fashion make it much, much easier to find their content.
Excellent point! Thank you @tibra.
I only understand half of what you wrote Ned in that comment, will read it a couple of times more though :-)
The more people, the longer the tail and the bigger the gap between influencers and non-influencers. That's my prediction under the current system. But with SMTs a lot will change, so by now we actually can't forecast what's gonna happen.
The key, I suspect, is the stake weighting. More people with high net worth need to appear on the platform and curate. To have a voice here, you need content and stake, or content and have somebody with stake curate.
That means the platform might do well to help some existing communities transition onto Steemit. The ones with both extensive activity and curation and sufficiently wealthy users.
Tenured and/or chaired academics are easily wealthier than most users here. Mathematicians generally possess a very strong sense of aesthetics and principle. I suggested to Ned they would do well to curate. The issue is that most of the people joining have literally nothing and cannot curate, even if they wanted. Therefore the gap between influencers and ordinary content producers grows.
One user with high net worth also cannot curate. No time, too few full upvotes. Increasing the number of full upvotes would lead to more abuse by some current large users: " :) " 300. " :-) " 300. " :-() " 300.
As you said, with >90% of all steem in the hands of <1%, and only 10% of that, 4-5, curating for quality, the gap between influencers and ordinary content producers would increase as more and more people join; but it will decrease if a threshold number of the new people are both very principled AND can easily obtain stake.
The issue now is that with all the spam and flag wars and weird upvotes, the problem itself, precisely the people who can help the platform — because they are principled and wealthy — for the same reason — because they are principled and their time is valuable — will not join — and the problem grows ever more serious.
(I should disclose that I'm a mathematician; I venture that I could get quite a few people here from there, especially if Dan is going to upvote, the minute MathJax is on Steemit. Then just sit back and watch angry mathematicians upvote the content producers, especially ones clearly trying, and flag to negative infinity all the abuse and spam and flag wars. An opposite feedback, a good one, just might establish.)
What about making upvotes on smaller accounts more attractive from a financial point of view? e.g. through a weighting: the larger the difference between the curator's (high) and the author's (small) reputation, the better the weighting.
Example: My rep is 71. Now if I upvoted a piece of content of an author that had rep 30 it would be proportionately more beneficial to me than voting a rep 50 user.
Does that even make sense?
Correct. That's one point which could be addressed by STMs like the @communitycoin. I really believe that by introducing SMTs the inequality could at least be partly solved.
I have never understood why the majority just sits and watches while the platform's store sign is covered with hatred. The trending page is the entrance hall of Steem for everybody who's still not signed up to this place - which is the majority of internet users. There's not only one day without drama, which makes this place look like a kindergarden.
Well I presumed that to be honest, since you were talking so much about them :-)) Great. I'm a Computer Scientist, and math was my favourite subject at the university. Now I confess that I haven't been much into it lately since I was working in marketing and sales all my life.
But maybe that common denominator and passion for science in general is still one of the reasons why I enjoy talking to you very much... who knows :-)
Enjoy your weekend!
Let's all honestly consider the following question:
If I had $5 Million in Steem what would I be doing with it. Let's be honest with ourselves.
I think I would do a lot of things, but I would probably have more than just a passing interest in protecting my investment if I had the power to do so. I don't know every other investment works, but here through Steemit, you do have say, especially with higher SP/VP. So if I had at least 500,000 of that STEEM in SP, I'd be a full blown whale with all the voting power that comes with it. And I would probably do what I could to help reward original (and what I deemed to be) high quality content for as many people as I could.
Even so, my issues would still be the same, unless a large voting power increase magically allows you to view differently than what you can as a lower minnow—visibility here is tough, and there's a lot of sifting that needs to take place just to get through posts.
If/when Communities finally arrives, maybe some of that sifting will be more concentrated and it won't feel so scattershot.
First I would pay off my wife's student loan, which isn't much by comparison, then buy a new laptop and a fancy dinner... and then do my best to improve Steemit so it can last longer, because the way it's going now, if nothing at all changes, it's going to sputter and die within four or five years.
In the event that you have enough cash and power you can just upvote your own particular posts/remarks like a few people do. Or on the other hand even do nothing, sit on your energy and hold up when our money will cost 5-10-20 dollars. Does it convey an incentive to the group? Does it help us and our cash to develop? Cash must work within the group, not inside the one wallet.
In the event that you are a substance maker and don't have much influence or cash to purchase votes you can depend on Minnowsupport just and perhaps on several your companions in getting rewards. On the off chance that you compose not about the Steemit and crypto would you say you are a lower class individual? What number of individuals with high notoriety or Steem power will vote in favor of minnows and make a manual curation out of their companions circle? How might I demonstrate difference on prizes to a $100-200 self voter with my few-penny worth downvote? Or on the other hand to counterfeiter who purchased the offer bot votes in favor of his duplicate stuck picture?
You are appropriate about "cash talks". Enormous cash talks louder. Much the same as in our genuine.i like you @surfermarly are exactly what this ecosystem needs.
Hey, awesome!
So much to get stuck into here!
HUH? Naaa! No content no Steemit.
That is cheeky! What about: No stake, no money for talking? :p
The Proof of Stake ecosystem is going to make it tough to bring balance, ever. The more you have the more you will have in future.
There are and will always be some standout content creators who may be able to bridge the gap, but otherwise 'we' need amazing acts of kindness similar to what @fulltimegeek is doing.
For many dolphins and whales, it's business. You have to respect them for that, but we are certainly drifting away from
Awesome! I hope you get lots of comments to keep you busy all evening and all week!
Great comment, thank you Ash!
Of course it's business. I don't want to challenge that at all.
It'd be fine if this was a closed room for investors and developers only. But under the current circumstances it's hard to label it with 'free market'.
Less than 0,5% deciding on more than 90% of the rewards pool is heavy. Do you remember how it was during 'the experiment' when @abit and @smooth provided us with supernatural voting power? It felt amazingly good that our voices were worth something and had a real impact on someone's life!
I only remember to get flagged like crazy and loosing my Rep. I am still wondering if that experiment actually made sense with results at the end?
Oh... But the flags must have been allocated for a different reason then, because during the experiment only whales who continued upvoting were downvoted to balance out rewards.
It made sense since the rewards were re-distributed to smaller accounts. I remember that my upvotes were ten times heavier than before.
That was no sustainable solution, but it showed possibilities.
Not true! I am not a whale, not even a Dolphin at that time and I got flagged by @smooth because some whale voted for me. I never complained and just moved on.
Then they balanced out the whale votes, that makes sense.
I never understood why they always included dead fish to the stats. It's like counting dead people in every election in the category of those who didn't bother to vote.
As for this issue you speak of, I always assumed your voting power should not be used for making "you" profit. No matter how much SP you have, it should only be allowed to reward other peoples' posts.
And in order to minimize the issue of alt-account voting, there should be an extra rule added to the system where you can't vote more times than you comment every day. Meaning, your total votes can never exceed your post number, thus forcing you to be more active than blindly voting without saying a word.
Even if someone spams the same words just to get over this limitation, it will still make it easier to spot spammers via activity history. Also, witnessess should be confirming large rewards before the actual payout. You know, so they can cancel (not downvote) obvious abuses such as spam, self vote, worthless content, and so on.
So you want a centralised authority that can decide what is worthless and what is not? Doesn't seem to align with the goals of a decentralised blockchain too well.
better than letting it go abused and ruin the platform altogether
Hm than we are just not on the same side here. I think we already have enough systems where a central organisation gets to decide things rather that the community.
Dead fish! That's a bit extreme, huh?
We're all pretty alive and talkative. The fact that nobody listens doesn't mean that we're not saying a word :-) Let's give these fishes more room and convert them into real influencers in this network!
That's an interesting point! Had to upvote your comment with 100% though...:-)
Thanks!!
Well written @surfermarly, touching on a lot of the thoughts I've had myself since joining this network about two months ago. I've wanted to post something like this myself but don't really think my 150 followers care and I don't want to risk anything before established. I joined with the notion that it was a fair distributing reward system, but it's far from. As a newcomer to steem you have 10 upvotes at $0.01 and unless you can get the attention of a whale or something there is now so many accounts that you have to be more than lucky to get anywhere, even if your content is really good.
Upon learning how it really is on steemit I'm a little delusioned about the future on the platform, but for now I keep on trucking forward, hoping some kind of change will happen that will diminish the division somehow.
Thank you @wanderingdanish!
I can totally relate. A couple of months ago I set up a new account just to see how it feels being new again. I published content that was pretty much touching the same topics as in my @surfermarly account. While I earned a lot in my established account, I didn't receive any type of attention in the new one. The quality of the content is irrelevant if you don't have an established network.
I hope this article helps to underline the importance of curation and also the need of a redistribution of influence.
Thanks for stopping by and leaving your thoughts :-)
I would change
to
People without a network can still get big upvotes through good content.
People without good content can still get big upvotes through their network.
There are always two sides you can look at:
Did you your second account not receive upvotes due to the lack of having a network or due to a lack of quality?
Does your main account receive big upvotes due to you having a network or due to you posting high quality stuff?
One can ask these questions, but how do you want to answer them? What about "who decides, what good content is"? The community of corse. When people upvote shit, even this has to be okay. But we need to find a way that building networks where our content fits in, becomes easier. With everybody using five tags and usually the more popular ones, we create a content jungle where neither creating nor curating is much fun anymore with more and more users on Steemit. I think the Interface itself creates many issues. With "Trending" and "Hot" you have two big categories for whales and dolphins mainly. But the majority of people has to struggle in "New". How should I feel that my content has some kind of value with nearly no views on it, because it is far away from being visible for the seven days people could upvote it?
I didn't post those questions in order to get answers. I posted those to show different perspectives.
And I am fully with you when it comes down to complaining about the Steemit Frontend. Personally I just don't visit "Trending" and "Hot" a lot anymore. Maybe once in two days for a quick look.
But that's a problem of a bad interface, not a problem of inequality in in distribution of power.
The interface leads to more inequality in distribution of power. Can be a coincidence that it empowers powerful people even more. Improving it could mean enhancing the oppurtunities of many users.
100% agree here ;) Even though I can't think of a far better solution! And it's the same problem with trending on YT as well, isn't it?
It's okay, Trending and Hot exist. I really wish, I could sort content out. Kind like this:
I'm sure you can give all the answers to all of your questions by yourself, I'm off surfing now! Happy weekend :-)
I just wanted to show perspectives ;) Have fun surfing, stay safe!
Auch hier - Durchatmen!
Ich hab leider ne krass ausgebildete Allergie gegen Oberlehrer...
Ja mei aber ganz ehrlich, ihr alle denkt natürlich ihr habt die Weisheit mit Löffeln gefressen und jeder hat Recht - Du bist auch nicht besser. Oberlehrer meets Oberlehrer. Deswegen diskutiere ich auch nicht mehr über Sachen, die ich nicht ändern kann. Sich gegenseitig mit Klugscheissen voll zu werfen bringt auch nix, ihr regt euch nur alle auf.
Am Schluss hab eh ich immer Recht!
Wow!!! Your really hit the nail on the head with this one @surfermarly
I completely agree with this entire article and believe the entire ecosystem of steemit is in dire need of a major overhaul. It's extremely difficult for minnows to even get noticed on here (unless your an uber nerd of course!) There is also a major lack of support for Minnows to get their content noticed. Sure MSP is great, but it still doesn't solve the problem of posts not getting much attention if you barely have an SP and followers. I do believe it can change for the better...how do we do that? I'm not quite sure! How does the community convince major stake holders to open up a bit and start delegating like champ to the right people and support diversity? It seems like the people with huge hearts and open minds have the hardest struggle when it comes to getting recognized. These are the people who need support the most, because they will give back what they get and create a ripple effect. I know for certain what ill be doing with my steem power in the future and hope others do the same! Thanks for sharing your many thoughts on this...very well thought out post, really enjoyed it =)
Did you try to join a similar minded group of steemians on Facebook or Discord? That's what I do for finding easier same minded content and voting what we like the most.
You touched some great points here! A happy user is a great multiplier. By accepting that we only have a retention of 12% we accept that 88% new users who leave the platform after short time might talk negatively about their experience with Steem then.
Considering that Steem might get some serious competition in the near future, that's quite alarming. A lot of disappointed (ex) Steem users could go and find their pleasure somewhere else.
Thanks for your support and valuable addings. I enjoyed the read very much as well! :-)
Thank you for bringing this up even though it is all over the platform. But this is good. This topic can not get enough perspectives :-)
I think it depends on where in time and space you put it. I also see that the power in here is just as dispersed as it does out here, that is to say it is merely a reflection of reality. Nobody knows when and if this will change. I wonder all the time whether Members are calling for someone to change this and who that is. The platform operators? They could do something, but it doesn't seem easy to me. I think it is similar to a state where those who make decisions that have an impact on everyone can never please everyone equally. One cannot, on the one hand, do nothing and leave everything to the market and, on the other hand, not govern from above if one wants to achieve something like common good regulation. We have the same problem in the democracies. There should be a referendum here if a consensus is to be reached. An interesting way of getting a referendum would be to ask all members for the least pain point, rather than what would please them the most. For example, by taking into account the premise of the largest possible voting amount and giving all voters several possible options. Like this one:
the highest voting amount should be enclosed:
Then each individual should decide for himself what sum appears to be the least painful for him. Someone who uses this method is, for example, Christian Felber, the founder of the common good economy. I recently wrote an article about the distribution problem in German:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@erh.germany/das-verteilungs-problem-und-wie-du-es-fuer-dich-loesen-kannst
For me, such a vote would mean that I would have to deal with the question of how much a whale should be able to distribute at the maximum with a push of a button of 100 percent.
It would be a possible approach. But this is not the way it is thought in my government or anywhere else where the levers of power are pushed. Nevertheless, many smart people develop very interesting approaches that should be mentioned. One of these is the Citizens' Parliament. You can find here (also in German): http://www.timo-rieg.de/2013/09/alternative-burgerparlament/
I highly recommend to read it because it offers an out of the box thinking.
However, since Steemit is not a closed system and new members keep coming in, the question of consensus would always arise anew, wouldn't it?
A "maximum-upvote-amount-per-user" will not work. You can just create a new account and delegate it half you power in less than a minute and you would have worked yourself around this.
True, thank you. That pulls the question of limiting the amount of accounts either.
I would like to ask you to remain for a moment at the idea of having conducted a poll. Suppose you've chosen a maximum amount of 500 SBD. Continue to accept that your choice is visible to all system participants (i. e. it is not secret). If you now use the loophole and create multiple accounts to trick or bypass the system, the question arises of how you will react when others will track and challenge your activities.
Without a consensus on an upper limit, it is difficult to accept this at all is a questionable act. For me, this would mean that participants who open several accounts below the upper limit would have to be treated differently from those who exceed the upper limit. Similar to our existing legal system, a perpetrator may in principle be punished for a law offence. Now the individual case is always to be considered and I can disapprove of the act, but understand the background. For example, as a judge I sentence a perpetrator to a one dollar fine, because in this particular case I recognize a motive that would not justify a harsher punishment.
What do you think? Is this approach worth thinking about and developing? I have put in an idea that I find very interesting and would have liked to see whether there is a willingness to deepen it.
So far the Steemit space looks to me as a virtual state where the settling citizens are being asked by themselves to discuss democracy.
I don't exactly understand what you are saying but I will try ;)
So you mean there should be measurments to punish certain users for doing certain things by making up "laws"?
In my eyes making up more laws moves the platform away from what I think are it's core values.
And even if such laws where there, I am not sure about how you would find out which accounts belong together, or how you would prove those findings. And punishment by law without prove isn't something I approve of.
Everybody can express his disagreement by downvoting/flagging, centralised punishment options are nothing desirable in my eyes.
I agree about not centralizing everything. But also not of decentralizing everything. Something in the middle, I would say.
Does that answer your question?
As my approach is not finished and I do just some brainstorming here, I thought it might be good for something. A consensus might change the single interactions as well.
Do you think it would be of some support to you in being asked about a maximum-upvote-amount-per-user? And would it be of use to you to see the results of others, too? ... This could lead to a habit of law and not to a centralized form of legislation, execution, and justification.
I ask myself the question if a poll and the result of it would change my view and habit in flagging/downvoting.
We share the same gusto for out of the box thinking though! :-)
Thanks for your valuable thoughts and links shared. I love your article about 'common welfare economy' (Gemeinwohl-Ökonomie). Do you now Dan Larimer's concept for a blockchain-based Mutual Aid Society (MAS). I think both have a lot in common, especially the idea of focussing more on the overall outcome than on individual success.
Many months ago @dan-atstarlite published a vlog where he underlined the interdependence between the overall growth of a community and the personal success of their members. It requires a lot of commitment since the stronger need to sacrifice parts of their earnings for the group in order to balance out the weaker. But in the end it's all worth it, because if the platform fails, nobody wins.
Again, you made some great points here and I appreciated the read!
Too sad your German article was published 11 days ago, I would have loved to upvote it, too :-)
Thank you a lot, Marly (is that your name?),
I am amazed by the variety of different concepts and thoughts being put here as a reaction to your article.
I think that pins it down to what I meant. Even though the winners might think, they won (for example the platform dies and the ones who cashed out on a great scale saved their rewards) they could lose on a greater scale - because whenever many losers will be left, it could be defined as a loss for the total.
Not necessarily because it would be like this, but because those who were left behind would or could think so. It always depends on what those with the many powers would like to do with this power. When I find myself sacrificing a part of my wealth, it is something different than when I find that I simply give up a part without feeling the loss. Which brings me back to the question of how much I really need personally as part of a large human community.
Have a good recovery from this huge amount of responding to your comments :-)
P.S. No, I don't know Dan Larimer's concept, but will try to find it. Thank you.
Marly is fine :-)