Is Steemit’s Success and Democracy at Risk from Crab Mentality?
It’s been an interesting few days on the Steemit platform. Our resident ’Maverick’ community member @dollarvigilante has been ruffling a few feathers and been getting flagged left, right and centre.
Now, I want to make a few things clear from the outset. I am a fan of his work and contribution to the Steemit platform, there are not many writers who can make me literally ‘laugh out loud’. My first encounter of his work was on Steemit, which is exciting in itself. I don't however, have a problem with the 'flag's' he received. Each 'flag' he received has left a little bit more in the pot for the less well known, undiscovered users, and @berniesanders and everyone else were merely reallocating resources to, where they believed to be a better place…
Where this ends for me, is when some users decide, after reading a blog with no tone of voice, that he is a narcissist, asshole… I’m all for freedom of speech, but calling people out personally in this way does not feel in the community spirt of Steemit (or at least, what I thought was trying to be achieved here).
This brings me on to an interesting part of the White Paper under the ‘Voting Collusion’ section…
The Story of the Crab and the Bucket
A man was walking along the beach and saw another man fishing in the surf with a bait bucket beside him. As he drew closer, he saw that the bait bucket had no lid and had live crabs inside.
"Why don't you cover your bait bucket so the crabs won't escape?", he said.
"You don't understand.", the man replied, "If there is one crab in the bucket it would surely crawl out very quickly. However, when there are many crabs in the bucket, if one tries to crawl up the side, the others grab hold of it and pull it back down so that it will share the same fate as the rest of them."
So it is with people. If one tries to do something different, get better grades, improve herself, escape her environment, or dream big dreams, other people will try to drag her back down to share their fate.
The Story of the Crab Bucket, http://guidezone.e-guiding.com/jmstory_crabs.htm
This is an interesting story for me, because I see this differently to the conclusion reached by Steemit founders the White Paper.
I see this as a reflection of the real world. It’s a zero sum game to pull others back and restrict their talents and goals. Everyone will end up trapped, and will ultimately meet their demise as a social prisoner. Everyone should concentrate on bettering themselves, to move forward and achieve something, not at the expense of someone else. Only that way, has everyone got a chance of getting out of the ‘bucket’.
I see Facebook, Twitter, Reddit as really big buckets with well greased sides. Facebook especially has got so many people in the bucket, it’s impossible for some people to leave. Steemit has an opportunity to be ‘the world’ free of buckets, or maybe in this analogue ’the ocean’. Let’s not ruin this opportunity by pulling free speaking Steemit advocates back into the bucket.
The Steemit White Paper states;
The goal of building a community currency is to get more “crabs in the bucket”. Going to extreme measures to eliminate all abuse is like attempting to put a lid on the bucket to prevent a few crabs from escaping and comes at the expense of making it harder to add new crabs to the bucket. It is sufficient to make the walls slippery and give the other crabs sufficient power to prevent others from escaping.
I disagree with this analogy, I think a better analogy could be..
Let’s get rid of these buckets. Let’s create a world of community, free speech, spirited debate, freedom. With a proactive community and a number of trusted community leaders (with the ability to reallocate resources to hard working, undiscovered talent, and suppress only content that could damage innocent people), we can achieve this end..
All of the Silicon Valley tech giants are in bed with forces (Government) aiming to suppress certain voices of truth. They are 'the buckets', Steemit isn't!!
that was a massive abuse of flag and I have issues with community members who think flagging is like downvoting. FLAGGING HURTS REPUTATION.
Even in steemd.com flagging is called downvote. Although it hurts reputation. People don't have anything else to use for downvote so use flags. Maybe there should be a difference between the two and both should be implemented. But for users, it's the same thing, since they don't see a difference . Sure we don't want to be Reddit but it is also part of curation to and stemit needs curation.
@cryptoctopus Thanks for your post. Just realise I'd used 'down-vote' instead of 'flagged' in my article. Mistake on my behalf. EDIT done. Agree with what your saying, there must be a better way of dealing with this. @dollarvigilante didn't deserve to lose reputation on this
Vigilante got some flak cause people did not recognize a troll post. It was obvious it was a parody from the start when you begin reading his blog post. It is funny how some people got offended by it.
Yes anger comes through online, but people miss humor.
I think it is a mindset and expectation thing from predetermined assumptions.
People just thought V was an ass, so they were not surprised to see his post that fit their confirmation bias.
They say sarcasm doesn't work well online, but I think it is a reader error...
I suppose my biggest critic would be, challenge him directly on the post, or DM him on chat. You would find out quite quickly your assumptions were wrong if you though he was being serious. Calling someone a name without knowing their intentions is wrong.
Luckily they picked someone who (I imagine) has the thickest skin on this platform...
You can't stop someone with sufficient SP hoards from flagging according to his wont, or to upvote trash. You can't affect anything, so this trust would be pointless.
I guess you can try to appeal to ideals - emotional manipulation is perhaps the only device available to small SP holders to affect Steem and SBD distribution.
I'm not complaining btw, I just want to inject a little realism. This is not a free and fair society - at least not more so than other social media. And you are pretty powerless if your pockets aren't sufficiently deep. There will always be censorship as long as Steem is distributed by voting, and as long as vote value is directly proportional with SP holdings.
More blockchain clients will perhaps faciliate the viewing of certain content, but at the end of the day masses will be concentrated in a minority of popular clients, so won't even have a significant effect.
I like #steemit because it messes with the "any publicity is good publicity" creed! :-D
Interesting way to look at it @pyrocolada
I just think that sarcasm as he wrote is a terrible way to communicate and will only lead to misunderstandings like this. The dude needs to learn how to write for media, you would think that after all his years in the biz, he would understand the power of clear, legible writing.
And he does... He was simply trying to save face later on by calling it sarcasm after everyone started bashing him for calling Steemit a scam on the front page of the website.
There is no shortage of good discussion about anarchy going on inside steemit. One thing for sure is, its not happening on DOllarVilgiante's blog. All that is going on there, is really silly posts of him learning to use the platform. That is rather boring to read. He is embarrassing himself, on his own blog, permanently in the blockchain. I am embarrassed for him and I no longer wish to associate with him. He has been muted. I will check back with him in a few months if I think about it to see if he has turned things around and started writing something interesting.
"The dude needs to learn how to write for media" - Dude has started a media company based off his writing that was worth $240 million at one point and currently has another multi-million dollar media enterprise. Dude may also already be the top Steemer on Steemit inside of a few days. You got some tips on how to write for me, kiddo?
I do have something for you that I think anarchist and just everyone else on this platform needs to see and understand. It's about love and compassion:
https://steemit.com/anarchism/@sterlinluxan/fiery-anarchists-and-online-debate-leveraging-emotional-intelligence-and-overcoming-volatile-impulses
It's not all about money and proving you are right or someone else is wrong.
It was clickbait, plain and simple! People don't like it..."Steemit is a scam! How Bernie Sanders Screwed Me!"
Admittedly, I haven't been able to follow what happened as closely as I should, but I've read his parody rant post and all I could say is, "to each his own". He's doing his own thing, and I'm happy that he's reaping the rewards of all his years of hard work. It's disheartening for a lot of users who've been working hard in the trenches for some time now here in Steemit, but I guess that's a case study that can be used to improve the system in general.
With regard to the animosity people feel, I'm not entirely sure how that can be alleviated. Posts like @hisnameisolllie put up though might be good to ease some misunderstanding.
Post that got flaged first wasn't parody or sarcasm post it was info about how streemit works. The second one that was ridiculing flaged of first one and that one was sarcastic, but some people found it insulting and flaged also, but in the end, it got monetary recognition.
the truth is, many people have not the ability to recognize parody. It not that they didn't want, its just that they are not able to. Especially in communication with words, humans often misunderstand each other, because humans are not designed to communicate through just writing.
True..... It came down to people reading the headline and not the content. I read a post where the upvote button should be removed from the pages before the article is opened, at least make me scroll blindly through the article before casting a vote without reading.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. We share almost the exact sentiment. If you don't mind, I'd like to share with you my post that almost has the same sentiment: https://steemit.com/thoughts/@jedau/the-wisdom-of-non-competitiveness
Instead of pulling each other down, we should all be pushing each other up. I like how you put it.
It's sounds simple, but there's a long way to go before mentality shifts for the positive. With people who share the same sentiment as you, we're inching much closer to achieving that. Thanks for spreading the word and bringing this to public consciousness.
I like your perspective on things. I finished reading the whitepaper recently and was also struck by the story of the crab bucket. It put me in mind of a saying that people have in Japan, where I live: the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. The implication is that individualism is to be suppressed in favor of being one with the group. Which I think is a really sad way to approach life. I constantly find myself reminding my daughter that it's OK to be different, and you don't necessarily have to go along with the crowd all the time.
Freedom of speech is supposed to be encouraged on Steemit, but I worry that maybe people won't speak their true minds for fear of running afoul of the reputation system. Reputation can be a double-edged sword: it can protect against people who only desire to do harm to the community, but it can also mute people who don't deserve it. I would never flag any post simply because I disagree with the expressed opinion or don't share the author's particular philosophy / religion / outlook on life / etc. Flagging should be reserved for truely abusive, exceptional instances. If you don't like something, then simply don't upvote it.
And to the whales who wield a large amount of power with their votes, I would offer a reminder from one of my favorite superhero movies: with great power comes great responsibility.
@cryptomancer Thanks for the reply. I enjoyed it. Think you've made some great points.
I've been looking for some time what @berniesanders is doing. He is one to vote honestly on what he thinks is right not that will give him curation rewards, he explained why he downvote. He is the whale with most praises which shows that he is soft-hearted. I can't forget when he was generous to the community and gave upvote to everyone on marijuana posts. He is doing what he thinks is right. To some people, it may seem like he is undermining steemit. He has the power and uses it in a way fighting for rightfulness. He may make some moves that might not be to our liking but it is also democracy.
So far I can't see steemit becoming like that bucket with crabs since everyone is being overly nice to score a profit. But polarizing sides is good for constructive dialog.
I agree, of course.
For the moment, here, on steemit it's not like that. I saw a lot of intelligent people just disappointed because their work was not taken into consideration by others. And other easy posts (even SPAM ones) were winning.
My personal view about this odd behavior : it's too early to have a conclusion about where steemit sails. The devs have a lot of experience in crypto + scripts, but are naive and they opened a Pandora box. It seems that hey don't understand the human behavior in more depth like a good psychologist (of course, it's natural) and the implications of involving money into a open social platform.
The human behavior is not a toy and is not easy to comprehend the extents of our actions.
Yeah, I'm not an arrogant prick. I'm just saying that this game (MONEY + FREEDOM) is dangerous.
We should be careful.
@fishborne Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Having an opinion makes you an interesting human being, not an arrogant prick. I think that was loosely the point I was trying to make, and one which you have made more directly.
I think you make some good points, ideologically Steemit is great, only time will tell how things actually pan out...
I agree. Time will tell.
We all hope we'll be able to go to College here, in Steemit.
"If we want different results, we have to do something different". I think steemit is doing that just fine. For me this a totally new world, as i was never familiar with the blogging concept, but now im hooked on steemit, not because i feel im being part of the "bucket" but because i see it the way you describe it.
Excellent post, thank you. I don't normally vote up trending posts because I like to save my $0.15 vote for posts which have nothing (it feels good!), but this post had to have my vote. We all can make such a difference by being respectful about our opinions while working to understand those of others. We can create the world we want to live in. Thank you.
Also, congrats on being a rising star in followers count! You moved up 25 spots to number 48 since I last ran the data. You've earned my follow with this post.
Wow, thanks @lukestokes I'll check out your posts.
I'm actually a DV fan. I have been for some time. Like i said int he comments of his recent post, I think him getting flagged was a good thing,. I think the fact that a popular crypto personality coming on here and having all the right followers and making an absolute shit post, and having that post make no money, is proof that the system works, or at least that it can.
I do think its funny and maybe a little tragic that many people missed the satiric tone of his previous posts (though, ftr, i also think its part of a larger problem) But at the end of the day, the post that actually got flagged was hot garbage and absolutely did not deserve the money it was about to get. Berniesanders' analysis was absolutely spot on.
The crab in the bucket analogy always makes me think of "hateocracy" the episode of the boondocks.
I don't think that analogy would work in the current ecosystem. I'm all for empowering each other and compounding value, but the current iteration and crowd of Steemit thrives on competition in the timeframe of their post getting rewards (12 hours and 30 days).
While the network as a whole gains value from this competition, it's easy to get discouraged or desperate when your posts do poorly. Removing this competition completely, however, will surely lessen incentives to excel and do well.
Crabs don't need to drag each other down, and indeed, may do well if they help one another instead. Removing the bucket however, causes them all to spill to the ground and lose their drive and focus. Goals are important to set, and the 'bucket' is an integral part of the stimuli that drive creators to excel.