I believe the largest problem facing Steem is many who were brought here were shown by hucksters that Steemit was a fast way to riches if you had anything of value to share. So it pulled people here using the greed carrot.
The idea of a gift economy is foreign, and many who come and leave simply couldn't understand the idea of putting others welfare higher in their scheme of priorities. The idea of focusing on others rewards as a priority equal or greater to ones own reward is foreign to most. The idea that one should focus on true connections and not suck up for a .03-.4 upvote contradicts the mode of greed society teaches us to embrace.
You see it so much, people posting multiple times per day. Low effort crap that shares nothing of who they are, their passions. Then they whine because no one connects with them. No one upvotes their shit, unless they pay for their votes.
Instead of focusing upon the "Whale Problem", why not focusing upon posting 3-4 times a day
I can't even imagine being able to do this in a gift economy. I have a hard time, even with rented delegation to up my voting to avoid dust votes (don't even want to get started on those giving low comment votes because they feel you should subsidize it with dustsweeper), posting more than 4 times per week. Any more than that and I dip into the 70's or lower in my voting power trying to give all thoughtful comments on my 4 posts a non dust vote. And, it would be foolish of me to think everyone should just come to my posts, but me not go to theirs if we connect and upvote their posts.
This in my opinion is how a gift economy works. You build your community, you have this remarkable feature where you can help those in the community build wealth. By focusing on others you grow to respect and care about, to want the best for them the rest takes care of itself. That's the beauty of this idea Dan built. It's a shame many can't see it. They see what most of crypto is for many, schemes to buy low and sell high. That has its place in the world, but that isn't what Dan built, despite its ability to be used in that way.
Anyone who thinks there is a problem here should look in the mirror and ask themselves the tough questions about why they are here, what they expect from this experience and if they are willing to GIVE what it is they seek.
We agree 100%
We are one of the original Whales left since @dan left the platform back in 2017 and sadly we have only seen the Greed and Abuse through the use of Bots and Paid Votes, Circle Voting etc on the Platform increase with each passing day.
Its really sad because we believe STEEM could easily grow to be a Top 25 Cryptocurrency even a Top 10 if it will only create a better system to Distribute and Incentivize individuals to Post Quality content and Whales to Upvote Content based on the Quality and not just their relationship or partnership that is really only benefiting a few people in the know. Many great people left the Steem Platforms for reasons outlined in this article.
If the Community and Witnesses don't start listening to the rest of the people they are going to witness more people leaving and trying to build there own platforms like WhaleShares for example.
We think building a better reputation and ranking system would be a good start. FYI we have tried to bring very Big Whales to Steemit and that has proven to be very difficult with the current atmosphere. We are going to start contacting Whales again, however, we are going to suggest that they BUY STEEM and HODL It well we work in the background to build tools and services to make STEEM more valuable and usable in the Public and Private Realms.
We believe the True Strength of STEEM is in the Community not in the Corporate Structure called STEEM Inc.
We invite you to join The ADSactly Community in our Discord Server we really need your help to build a better System that benefits us ALL not only the Rich and Famous Whales, Orcas, Dolphins etc.
http://discord.me/adsactly
The main problem is people migrating their current economic value structures into a brand new economic theory, and it’s not going to work.
My biggest issue with Steem, not that it’s going to deter me from continuing to use it until one day I become a responsible whale, is that I pour in hours of work into my posts only to be widely ignored in favor of low quality spam, whale posts, and leeches. Which I think is the biggest issue.
As of now, a user can have many others steal their work and view it without ever having to upvote it.
Is it possible to implement a paywall where someone sees a preview before accessing the full content, which will only be available after casting an upvote?