Is Steemit Decentralization Backfiring!?..
Today I share my thoughts on Steemit and the decentralization experiment we've all been a part of - Decentralized Social Media. Is it okay that one user (who has a bigger bank account) can ruin everything for all of us? Is this something that's sustainable in its current form? Is there something we can do? I'm asking for your thoughts as it will guide me on the next steps that I take...
@jerrybanfield asking for your advice bud :)
I think the Grumpycat is not fully understanding his power, and that is frustrating, however I also believe that decentralization and the power Grumpycat has acheieved in this system are still better than Youtube's centralized power, and the best way I can explain my thoughts on this is to provide an analogy.
Steemit's decentralization and the power one user can achieve in that space is in my view akin to a rich oil barren from the early 1900's, who is bossy and maybe dangerous or mean. They can hurt you if you are within their range, within their reach, and observed by them.
Youtube and its centralized authority are more like a corrupt totalitarian government, they might defend you in some instances, they might even pay you in others, but if you stop towing their line, they will stamp you out completely, there is no where within their system that you can exist if they do not choose to let you exist.
So decentralization on Steemit is not perfect, and bullies will get you and me some times, but Youtube is not better, centralization is not better. If you want to tow their line you will get paid on Youtube, but same is true here. If you want to come under the authority of the "oil barren" Grumpycat and play as he insists, then you will be fine. Im not saying thats great, Im just saying that is the way this game can be played, but make no mistakes Youtube is a bigger authority in their pool (Youtube), and if you go there, you are still playing by someone elses rules, only with Youtube, their demonetization can be complete, not partial like Grumpycat does/did.
Hope that helps. Hope you stay!
Upvoted and resteemed.
Love your idea about creating a service to build up a benevolent counter-force to grumpycat. The thing to remember here is this: grumpycat has way more money invested in Steem and Steemit.com and loses BIG TIME if this were to cause everyone to leave the platform.
Steemit can also be modified so it will take at least 2 or 3 (or more) "whales" to coordinate in order to flag your post and "steal your money".
Well, that just stinks. I mean it smells really bad.
I watched the video, read the comments, resteemed and upvoted. That's about I can do as a real newbie.
For the record, I still think decentralization on this platform is a good thing. You are right, this is a cyber bully, and you are the temporary target. From my perspective it really looks like he's trying to restrict competition to his approved service. That never worked out in the old Western movies from when we were kids...
I believe there is some recourse. I think I saw something about conflict resolution (If you believe you were improperly flagged or down voted...) but I don't remember exactly where I saw it. A cursory search didn't get it, I'll look further and let you know.
I think if it were me I'd try to get this in front of a witness. I haven't been here long enough to have a real recommendation but I have a couple of names: Tim Cliff @timcliff and Mahdi Yari @mahdiyari. Both seem genuinely interested in the platform and how it runs and breathes.
I wish it were more. Don't let them grind you down. We need you here.
All the witnesses are very aware, but there's nothing they can do except push people to constantly use their voting power to flag his posts and comments. Until a new hard fork changes the way the rewards pool/voting power works, this is the system we live in.
Don't give up man! Steem is still very much experimental, things will get sorted out. The issue you brought up is of great importance.
Thank you! Can you tell me what you’re doing here on Steemit? You literally helped me so much with your upvote ... basically recovered my money. Would love to hear your channel’s plans for Steemit and what I can do to help that.
Not much, I'm a steem investor. I'm pretty busy IRL so don't really have plans for my channel..I occasionnaly scout for steem content on youtube and that's where I found your video.
I wonder if you stumbled upon any of my posts yet...
COIN MAN by @pocketechange A Penny may cost a Dollar...
@peaceandlove brother will you please contact me i am owner of a bot i want to have some thing special if you agree we can go if not still fine ,my contact is [email protected]
Well thank you. I would be very much interested in speaking with you via steemit.chat at some point on a way to work on the issues with Steemit. I consider myself an investor and would love to see this platform succeed. So if that's something you would consider I do have some ideas that would be beneficial to all new Steemians. Thanks for your quick reply!
@brandonfrye you are very lucky to have his ( @peaceandlove) attention congrats my friend :)
Thank you, I agree 100%. It shows that the investors are listening and are very passionate about the success of Steemit. :)
Oh.. and I also just burned a few coins promoting this post which should raise our value. Not to mention I'm on a plan to buy up all the coins in the near future. :)
You should have hired me for basically free to you. #militia #botkiller lol
Why are you supporting bots? I think the only way to do battle with them is in the trenches like me.
Mysterious lol
Hello @peaceandlove
I will love you to See what we do here;
Announcing the Steem Power ' Breakfast Awareness' Campaign at Rivers State University Of Science and Technology
Thank you sir
@peaceandlove you seem like a highly invested Steemian, but not very active on the platform.. how about you hire me as your investment manager
For sure, i think a steem investor doesn't really care with their reputation score ;)
Because if yes, this guy can eazly create a simple post then selfvotes it ;)
Hope the peace will always with ya :D
I wished that there are more than one of you in this platform who help others. Giving them a boost. A sense of appreciation. Cheers 🥂!
Please see story me ?? I sent you sbd
Not sure if you've been following the whale wars, but ya, it's bad. Something to note though, grumpycat isn't trying to do it for any noble purposes. In the Steem Dev slack, people talk about how he's just trying to steal more money from the rewards pool, just like haejin, but trying to frame that in some "noble" cause. And it's important to note, he's basically a bot too, just like the one's everyone is using. His "checkthisout" account is actually him making fake posts, and then upvoting his own comments for massive rewards. He's trying to hide the fact that he is taking advantage of the system.
Important point though, this is not about decentralization. This is about incentive structures and game theory. Since the shift to linear rewards systems, the same change that enabled voting bots, it enabled whales to both control what makes it onto the trending page via upvotes, as well as for other whales to flag accounts that they disagree with.
Sorry to hear that he basically "stole" all the SBD you put into those voting bots. Super frustrating.
I saw the haejin truce but don't get what he's doing wrong. What's up with that battle?
I suppose it's all open to interpretation, but basically he was writing posts that, while "valuable" didn't seem like they should be getting $400 each. It was just posts about different crypto performance in the market. And he was doing this 5-10 times a day, and making that amount of money each time. And it was all due to 1 whale upvoting him every time. So...as you can imagine this looks pretty bad (no one person really deserves 6% of the entire rewards pool every day). And then him and Bernie Sanders (the account, not the actual person, lol) got into a spat about it...and so on...
Not sure what's going on with the truce. I heard there were some stipulations between him and some witnesses, but it's all beyond me. At the end of the day it's all just a good representation of how the current system is overly beneficial to whales who got in early, and it's hard to properly correct it at the moment.
Don't lose your head over something so small. Just keep your head on straight and keep on moving.
Yeah this sucks.
I'm one of those followers who saw what you were doing and gave it a shot. I mean it didn't get huge traction from my purchase like you did, but I made my bank back so far and thought I followed the rules.
As a new member if Steemit, now I'm sitting here wondering what is allowed and what is not on the platform by the people with the big bank.
I'm never going to use bots again, just in case I don't comply, but think of the people that will just be scared away.
Sorry to hear you went through this Brandon. Just sucks bro cause you have been helping so many people, myself included. Shame that these people feel the need to punish the ones that are putting great content out there.
Isn't that the purpose of Steemit? Great content and community? This seems to go against both.
Thanks @jongolson, what's crazy is this guy who's basically bullying me has $3 million invested in Steem. I have the amazing power to drop the value of that money in a week's time. That's what I do. I'm a content creator and a marketer. But more importantly, what's especially interesting to notice here is that the people who "should care" about the platform... don't. This makes me question everything. I reached out to @jerrybanfield earlier and got no response. Not a, "Hey, this is what we'll do about that" or "I'm sorry that happened and we're trying to make this platform better". I really want Steemit to be an awesome place for everyone... I really do. But there has to be some accountability from the higher ups. I just wish I would have gotten here a LOT sooner.
I'm not sure what happened to my original reply to this post, but I'll try again... I'm glad you addressed this issue so quickly and yet thoughtfully. I was shocked as I watched it happen, particularly on the same day that Twitter got exposed for "shadow-banning," or censoring views. I really hoped blockchain technology would solve that, but now I see that cyber-bullying and viewpoint discrimination can exist here as well. Please continue to post great content. As I mentioned in my post earlier today (which you read in this post), I'm learning a lot from you. You're providing the kind of content that should be valued by all of us as an investment into the Steemit community. I look forward to hearing about the future plans you mentioned at the end of this video.
Hey @poimenpost, thanks for your reply and thanks for your comment on my last post. I appreciate your feedback even during all this turmoil. I think this will pass and I can get to the bottom of this with some further understanding of the blockchain (and how much money I need to dump into it) to help people like you and me avoid this type of bullying. I personally believe the answer is setting up a delegation to allow certain whales to provide power (me included) to stop these people. I'm looking at my accounts now and what I can add to the contribution.
Absolutely!
I don't think steemit really falls under decentralized. It's a company, that means money will always have a way of making the rules for the rest of us. Since there are no mentions of any of this with the @checkthisout or other accounts it seems steem Inc is okay with how it's playing out.
What really sucks is I wish you were wrong. But you're apparently right.
Yup, it sucks. I saw my name in Jerry's post, so I headed over for a little support. I just up'ed myself too, so probably babd timing to have my name appear.
This isn't the type of post I created my stamp for and I am sorry it was used on your post. I am sure you are familiar with the type of post that deserve a S*itpost stamp of approval.
I had a feeling that you would make a post shortly after that event. sorry for that. It's stupid.
It really is. But I'm glad you weighed in on it. How is it that a new person to Steemit gets bullied this early on? Is this part of the initiation? I feel that this platform will fall really soon if this keeps it up? And I can bet some money on that. That's why I'm considering what I'll do about it. What is the answer to this?
Well, the way that I look at it is that for every grumpy cat out there, there is a shit load of supporters. I feel that people will abuse the system forever, but I don't feel the balance will be broken anytime soon. I feel that as long as we support each other in the right to promote our own stuff that we feel we have worked hard on, there will always be a great opportunity here. Either way, screw it! Other people's disapproval shouldn't dictate your actions..... I saw a really cool video about this a while ago...let me pull it up for you:
As long as we remember that these sorts of things aren't personal, we won't get distracted. I wish you well!
There should be a debate on decentralization. Developers & creators of this platform should make rules for this community not the individuals with power, because if they didn't control it this platform will become a war zone between its members. Rules should be announced by the real administrators of this platform. Decentralization should have it's extents otherwise it will create many more problems for this platform/community & especially minnows. Good work
& Best of luck bro ♥