Perhaps but I don't see how the decision making is decentralised or autonomous in any way.
It is controlled from the top down by Steemit Inc with occasional input from the community.
If you use the very loose definition of voting on content and electing witnesses then you might think of it that way but I think part of the idea of a DAO is that there is also decentralisation of governance in the same way.
I think it is at best a kind of semi-DAO.
Voting on content = a budgeting mechanism. It's currently mostly used for supporting blog posts, but it's also used to support developers like good-karma developing eSteem, and marketing initiatives such as steemdrive. In both cases a vote from Steemit Inc users helps, but it's not necessary.
I'm not sure what aspect of governance you're saying is centralized? The development of the protocol?
Possibly but I'm talking about the development of Steem and the direction it takes - by the whitepaper definition (in my opinion) at least it does not meet the criteria. I suppose ultimately it depends on what you consider the elements of a DAO to be.
See above - I'm not sure how much plainer I can make it. I'm not against the current structure - I think it makes sense at the current size and level of development but I think calling it a DAO is mislabelling it.
Further the stigma attached to DAOs as a result of last year is something I would rather avoid too.
The governance mechanism for this exists, but the Steemit Inc accounts simply has a stake large enough that it doesn't need to involve many smaller stakeholders in the process to make decisions. This is similar to the way a majority party doesn't have to involve other parties in a government. Although even with their majority stake, they still had trouble getting their agenda through on multiple occasions.
As their stake diminishes they will have to involve more people in this process. But I do think we should be doing more things along the lines of stakeholder polls on protocol upgrades, encouraging users to see themselves as stakeholders and be involved in the process.
I agree. I think it is tricky though.
One of the problems with the big DAO last year was that having so many people involved and decentralising decisions to such a great degree lead to a kind of paralysis.
Any DAOs that follow that kind of model will need to create mechanisms to get round that I think.
In some situations having an organisation or a set of people that have the final say can expedite matters and may be more efficient - that is particularly important when a crisis or emergency occurs.
I think over time Steem/Steemit will find the right balance.
The Steemit INC team, I'm guessing Ned, chose the marketing people. That's as centralized as it gets.