Programmers, crypto-nerds, and serious bloggers want to keep adding high-value content to Steemit but casual, everyday social media users are intimidated by it. What's the answer? Should Steemit clarify it's identity or should it fracture into many different ones like Reddit did?
Unless efforts are made to address and end harassment by self appointed moderator trolls, and end the funding of these trolls by steemit founders, expect usage to continue dropping.
The endless inquisitions, brutal harassment, and trolling will hurt Steem more than anything.
Users and founders alike must get used to the fact that value will redistribute here and it is not their job to fund and encourage witch hunting harassment when redistribution does not fall their way or shows a pattern consistent with their pet conspiracy theory.
Yep, I agree. For all the high flying liberty talk in their white paper took about five minutes to see the coming police state.
When real money or transfer of value is involved it is imperative that people who would use deception or unethical tactics to scam or trick people into giving them their value, be rooted out of the system.
There is no possibility of deception or tricking people in this system. How can someone trick you into thinking that content is good when you know it isn't, or vice versa? It is the people pushing that harmful meme that are being destructive, trying to turn this into a trollfest (and, unfortunately, to some extent succeeding).
If content gets votes, it gets rewards. If it doesn't, it doesn't. Vote for content you like and don't vote for or downvote content you don't like or think is harmful. Everyone is entited to vote as they see fit, even if you don't agree with them. The blockchain adds up the votes and never, ever cheats. Might be the first honest election in the history of the world.
Then you are presenting this platform as a business rather than a social network which in my opinion is less attractive to pick up then the former. Also I don't understand how pointing out when the facts don't add up is harassing or trolling. How does steemit look when posts that are poorly written and have poor quality information get upvoted to $200 or more. I am concerned about steemit's reputation and I do not like the direction that you want it to head towards. I think that you are only self-concerned and are looking make the most profit you can without any regard to others apart from the people in your select group.
Edit: Also I would be more inclined to believe you if I wasn't on the receiving end of 'harassment' and 'trolling' by a whale @kushed who decided to downvote a few of my comments on threads by an author @armen that I suspect is his own sock puppet. My comments were not meant to be abusive and they were questioning the legitimacy of the information in the post.
I don't know what select group you think I'm in, but if you mean those with a significant ownership stake, then yes I'm interested in increasing the value of our ownership stake by encouraging more positive, casual, entertainment type content that people actually enjoy as this insightful post indicates. I believe that will attract more users, increasing the value or our ownership stake (and I conversely believe that if we don't attract more users, then this platform will die out and our ownership stakes will become worthless).
The sort of bickering over who is right and who is wrong, who is a sock puppet, which posts are more deserving of some particular dollar value of reward, etc. to which you are referring is exactly the opposite of that, and will have (and is already having) the opposite effect. There are rampant fake profiles, sock puppets, upvote bots, likebots, etc. on other social media platforms (you don't really think that B-lister has a million real likes do you?). If those platforms were constantly polluted by arguments over it instead of people enjoying interacting and being entertained despite a certain background level of cheating and abuse, those platforms would be abandoned instead of having a billion users.
Steem/it has a stronger, more robust set of economic incentives to mitigate against that sort of abuse, thus over time it may end up being less prone to it. Whining about how it isn't perfect now is nothing other than self-destructive.
If you like the content, vote for it. If you don't like the content, don't vote for it or downvote it.
BTW, I have participated in some of the downvote wars surrounding @armen and his poker posts, by upvoting critical comments that had been downvoted since I felt the debate over quality was worth some visibility. If I missed yours, I apologize, but I can't be everywhere all the time.
I generally agree. The only loophole I've seen is someone that uses posts on steemit to lure people into scams elsewhere. Technically, the bait isn't breaking any rules because the violations happen off-site. This way, you can have a good reputation rating on steemit even though you ought to be tarred and feathered in the outside world.
Do you have a proposed plan to curtail the actions you've outlined? What can the minnows do to help if anything?
As a minnow your options are limited. But I would suggest stop following people who who pursue these inquisitions and spread divisive harassment over how people post or vote. Participate in positive conversations and subcommunities within Steemit and shun the negative people and subcommunities. Vote for quality content that you like (whatever that is, whether high-brow or otherwise) and decline to participate in debates over how you or others should be voting (especially when negative). Invite like-minded friends to join who are also looking for a positive experience and likely to contribute in that manner.
All sage advice. Do you consider the major anti-spam and anti-plagiarism efforts to be on the up and up?
I support and sponsor Steemcleaners which pursues a positive approach of trying to educate people about how to produce great non-plagiarized and properly-categorized content, and stopping identity theft while avoiding harassing or pressuring people to reveal more personal information than they are comfortable doing. I can't comment on any of the other groups, but I suggest evaluating them against this standard.
Very good. Steemcleaners was the group I had in mind when asking. To me it looks like they act in a fair and measured way. But I'm fairly new here. There could be hidden dirt I'm unaware of.
It's good you bring those topics up, as I think it can seem like a tone is being deliberately cultivated on Steemit, when I don't think that's the aim of the whales. If it is, then that needs to be stated clearly and officially for new people to know.
There is a lot of value in basic entertainment for people. So whether something is 1000 word philosophy or quick slapstick humour shouldn't matter. Yet that kind of stuff really saturates a platform; but there's no word min on Steemit yet, right!?
What I gathered is that Steemit's aim is more "highbrow", not formal, but more like Medium in terms of what is Trending.
If all the de facto spokespeople are in crypto or anarchist gurus...Im not sure what that does to encourage mainstream adoption.
I agree with your points and especially the last part! I'm really wondering how Steemit will look like in a year from now and hopefully we together can figure out how to reach the mass and at the same time keep out the trash..
But yes accessibility in terms of topics and post lengths is an important topic and since social media serves the main purpose of entertainment I believe we need to consider a shift in content, at least the focus of it.
I just don't think it's possible to solve the problems of online content (plagiarism, clickbait, fact manipulaton, etc) and achieve mainstream use to the degree of facebook.
Not completely, and I think extreme measures to try to do so are enormously counterproductive. On the other hand some degree of users preferences against these things (which may vary) can be reasonably expressed through voting without crating a hostile atmosphere.
A unique views counter in the public UI (for blog posts) would make a great difference. It works with the incentive system which is steemit's edge and niche. Since steemit has a superior incentive system to any platform, makes sense to borrow any of the incentives that work on the other media sites as is possible.
Adding views would help for feedback when there is lack of replies and upvotes for people. and people 'fill in the blanks' themselves as to what views mean and how many is 'good' feedback to them. Whereas numbered dollar values have some anchoring (and disillusionment at times, currently). Enables for "self-curation" that isn't shooting in the dark
There definitely should be separation between "curating" and "cultivating" tone and content because it's obtuse to have hidden biases. There is some hostility sometimes yes. All of the fun of a monetized system! Just look at youtuber wars omg
Yeah, personally, I'd rather see a view counts in the feed than estimated payouts.
Nothing, it's antithetical to it, because most mainstream thinkers believe anarchic thought to be juvenile and ridiculous. If they want wider acceptance, they need to take the reins off and let the platform run itself. The last few days, there has obviously been a concentrated effort to exclude entertaining content from the top of the trending page in favor of Crypto and blockchain content.
More conventional people probably think Anarchy is cultish in the way I think that Garden of Eden is. Anything that refers to someone as "our founder"...I try not to judge let's leave it at that. Least no one does that on Steemit. Imagine how bizarre..."our founders, Ned and Dan. Our future AI blogger revolutionaries...fuck it, let's all buy an island somewhere!"
lol Yup. I already buggered-off to Chile and am building a new start-up community in the rainforest now. I prefer to live my ideals rather than just arguing about them on the internet :)
It doesn't even sound cultish or weird (I'm serious), that's hard to do! lol Pretty cool endeavor
HA, that's hilarious it doesn't sound cultish, or weird, but it clearly has the potential to be both, right? LOL I agree, it sounds cool. Hard thing is, we're running the western world into the ground so hard that more and more people feel that way, and we should not need to feel that an escape is necessary.
ha! Thanks 😀
True. At least at first glance the association is strong. Doesn't matter if the beliefs are politically and philosophically sound. I know I first became interested in Anarchy because I was into punk rock and breaking things as a teen. That's still the first thing I think of...
Some insights from my world. I’m having reasonable success on platforms like Wattpad that caters to the millennials that love to write and read. These are not young people that get intimidated easily, in fact, they are fierce. I have connected with many of them and suggested they use Steemit.
Unfortunately, the crypto world is still quite scary for most of them. Most think it’s unlawful. And when they go to the front page of Steemit many of the posts focus on crypto and steemit, and some of the discussions are political, vigorous and confusing for them.
My audience is composed of 70% young girls—passionate, intelligent, and geeky. One of the first tags they search for is #feminism where the trolling is high. I have written this before, young people that love to write and read will love the reward aspect of Steemit. Steemit needs a good strategy to engage them. They are the future, once they like something everyone follows. They are incredibly passionate, loyal; they support each other and of course, they love fandoms.
We need to move beyond the monolith into curated tribes. If the user can select their preferred types of tribes when they sign up, they will have a much more welcoming experience.
A good marketing strategy can identify and prioritise the tribes that are most suitable for the growth of steemit.
On a separate note, one cheap feature that should be prioritised in the backlog is the social media sharing buttons. J
It needs t o fracture quite heavily. In order to attract a wide array of users it needs to offer a wide away of content and functions. Money aspect of it should be slightly supressed (not removed, just gamified) so people are just interacting in ways they enjoy and not forced along a single channel of opportunity
Totally agree. Let it feel like play money at first so it's not as intimidating. People get weird when money's involved.
Yes. Play money for sure opens up the opportunity for internal markets also..... being able to cash out to fiat is less a concern when they figure out the can spend it internally
Good insight.
Right now, Steemit is presented as a monolithic mish-mash of content that is quite unappealing to the average social media user.
Potential ways forward could be:
These are just ideas on the fly. My point is there are many directions to go to make Steemit more social. However there needs to be a move away from "all content" views (e.g. 'new', 'hot', 'trending') towards smaller niches catering for different tastes.
Steemit right now is too much Medium with crypto, than reddit with crypto and far far away from facebook with crypto what 99% of people would use.
The network and virality is missing. You can't see the forest for the trees.
The individuality of your presence and the sharing of what you like is missing.
Also 90% of people have to be held at gunpoint to read an article.
lol exactly
I think another issue with mainsteam social media users and Steemit is technological accessibility.
The majority of social media users create content on their smartphone - it's why videos are so prevalent as a medium in the past few years. You can't write long posts on your mobile. But this exists on reddit as well.
Another issue with technological accessibility and mobile is the lack of a well marketed mobile app (or mobile strategy in general). I had trouble finding eSteem on Google Play and I work (among others) in app marketing.
If steemit had a neat little link in the menu leading to a page with download links for mobile apps - it would increase user engagement and attract more social media users who are reluctant to use steemit. Granted, a lot of their contribution would be curation rather than creation, but this is, again, true about pretty much all social networks.
I kinda feel like this comment should be its own post. :P
Fantastic points, for sure.
If only I wasn't too tired to write it and didn't have workstuff to write... :)
I think that Steemit has a few disadvantages for ordinary people.
UX - Steemit is not sexy. is not a platform which is or could be popular so far. Steemit has no profiles, groups, and stuff like this. Steemit is fundamentally complicated for ordinary people. The white paper is written way that almost nobody understand.
Only understandable thing is that you can get paid for content. What content? No matter what content.
Founders are not very active in promoting of Steemit. This is the main thing why is Steemit struggling. Yes there is plenty of new users every week but less and less active users. Founders should hire a marketing and communication manager who will be responsible for promoting steemit around the globe. I like the videos with Dan and Ned talks in geek way to geeks. But for real growth is tremendously small initiative.
As you might know that I wrote an article this Friday. (you should know because you up-voted it) the reason I wrote this post was chance to promote Steemit.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@airmike/steemit-was-mentioned-on-webexpo-2016-in-prague
I asked question to Evan Luthra (he has 800 000 followers on social media platforms) what he think about steemit front of the audience. I also talked to Michael Lopp - writer and VP Engineering at Slack,
( previous apple, pinterest) what he think about new way of social media platforms based on blockchain. This was my initiative. I went home earlier to let all of you knows about this opportunity . I needed something to show them. And result? 18 up-votes. 1x resteem. Even If I asked for resteem this post. My question is what the hell I can show those people when steemit doesn't work fundamentally ? I did something for Steemit. I did promot steemit but frankly I regret my decision, because I didn't prove that Steemit is good place to write.
You mentioned that people do not care about video blogging but frankly, video has way brighter future on the steemit than text, I guess. Thanks to @furion and https://steemit.com/steemq/@furion/steemq-a-decentralized-video-platform-for-steem
Proper marketing won't happen until after this open beta phase is completed.
The beta tag is arbitrarily, and should be removed IMO. The platform is live, has people using it, works reasonably reliably, and requires investors to pour money into it in order to even function (otherwise rewards can't be cashed out). That is beyond beta. Beta does not mean that every conceivable feature that might exist in the future is already deployed. The tag serves an an excuse for why this or that isn't happening and no other useful purpose. If not immediately, then let's have a clear schedule and roadmap for what is necessary to end the "beta phase" and remove the tag.
Completely agree. It's not perfect but it's working well enough. Time to get serious.
I was wondering to see at least reaction of Steemit users on my blog. That is all I wanted to say. Yes, Steemit is not ready yet., but I am more afraid about behavior of users than technical features. thank you for comment.
cause this is a shit platform ....it's all about talk about steemit and earn ...or talk about your interest and earn shit amount. Garbage. Plus none knows about crypto currency. Look man, in the 1980 you went to school to write now a days people are lazy and less educated. All they want to do is buy the latest camera and shoot video. Why do you think Youtube is the leader in social media?
There are artists and writers on here doing very well, actually. Steemit just happens to be the one interest that everyone here has in common. As for the cryptocurrency, the whole point is to use steemit as a mechanism for introducing people to cryptocurrency for the fist time. Of course most people don't know about it yet. It's still new and relatively complicated, as far as most people are concerned.
And if they show up here and all of the top trending posts are crypto, steemit and blockchain, they won't stay. Had that been the case when I arrived, instead of EricVanceWalton's fiction and poetry riding the top, I would not have stayed, feeling that my work wouldn't compete. But, that seems to be the trend over the past several days, to a week.
Yes, very true. I should stop being so negative. But i write what i feel and maybe i should put more effort into being positive and run with it. Cheers!
Your points are valid. I think many around here fear infant-mortality of this platform. The ultimate goal is to have diverse posts with rewards spread far and wide. There's a path there but if the powers that be guess wrong there are dead-ends too.
The part I'm most optimistic about is that great ideas don't die. If Steemit fails there will be lessons learned. Somebody will do it better the next time and the next time etc. as necessary to get it right. I feel the same way about Bitcoin. If it fails people will analyze the failure mode and design to prevent it in the next one.
yeah the solution is sub-steemits. when will that happen?