Sort:  

You mean like Gab.ai is doing? (FWIW, I'm on the waiting list.)

Great idea - I'm inclined that way myself - but it comes with a side effect. The people who have been censored, from what I've seen on social media et. al, have some ideas that (to put it politely) are questionable.

You can see an example of what kind of folks are most interested in a censorship-resistant platform by looking at the vids on the front page of BitTube:

https://www.bittube.co/

As you can see, those folks would likely be downvoted and/or flagged if they brought their content here.

It's a tricky thing, reaching out to censored people. Some of them, perhaps many of them, have been censored because their opinions are abhorrent to normal folks. Those people flooding in, would be a test of our tolerance.

I totally agree it would be a mixed bag and tricky on what they'd bring. I'll look into those links though, see what's been done elsewhere.

Great idea. Indeed the controversy would be great advertising. Obviously we would need to be careful with anything illegal that might be detrimental to the image of the platform but that leaves a lot of leeway. Could you flesh this out a bit more with examples possibly?

I'll think on it...I would think leaving it broad is better, just to not pigeon hole the content. Outside hate speech or copyright infringement reasons for censoring elsewhere, I'd figure there'd have to be stuff still available. It'll be interesting to try to search for 'censored' content, lol

Only other route I could think would be highlighting a 'cause/charity' or something that would provide a direct impact, but it'd be hard to achieve that with mostly newbie votes.

I'll mull it over though

Thanks. It doesn't have to be too specific just examples. I think if we come up with some really good ideas we could form some sort of informal group to get working on implementing these things to move them forwards. I believe in addition to yourself there are probably others with knowledge of marketing and how to put these sort of things into practice. Ned was saying on Steemspeak that right now their number 1 priority is building the social part of the platform and advertising is in their later plans. That makes it even more important that we as a community work on spreading the word.

Rather than opening up to all censored (on other sites) material, what about selecting specific ones that are controversial (yet not a whole can of worms liked hate speech/copyright issues) and open them up to discussion here. Then use these controversial topic headlines to pass around and try to draw people into those targeted discussions. They would ideally be motivated to sign up here so they can comment.

Honestly I'd love to see more content consumers/ commentors come on board (and ideally get some rewards for that. )

@thecryptofiend
Something I'd have to think a bit on honestly. I don't really care for first that come to mind (trump, globalization/ anti nationalism, mideast issues) since i don't really see those going well. And more positive ones like how to better the local or world community wouldn't take hold well (i think. )

Sure I'll find something one i get some research time. On my phone right now

But that was exactly what i was referring to. I think that project can be helpful for on boarding new people, especially commentors (which i see being a huge benefit to the site)

Yes that is part of the initiative that @donkeypong and others were working on - if you look in the comments of the discussions in #til etc you will see that the comments are getting up-voted too.

I think the lack of discussion and commenting has been the biggest change since the peak. I think part of this is the falling price of Steemit combined with the perception that comments don't get rewarded.

Starting up vibrant discussions on controversial topics would be a great way to increase engagement. Even better if those topics of discussion were able to get prominence in google search results. That way people would get introduced to Steemit without even realising what it is.

Are there any specific topics that spring immediately to mind and would fit into this definition?

Imo the big hurdle right now is tapping into people's motivation/passion. The generic user (again imo) has a certain learning curve to fight through that most are adverse to having to deal with. So right now I focus more on things that will get these prospective users to get through this, whether it be something they are angry about (which we saw work in the latest election), feel they are impactfully helping with or a way they directly benefit (like via a payout or lottery type reward.)

I will say that the bulk of what is currently in development (medium like editor, private messaging, busy.org, pushing steemit content to external sites with the upvote button such as beyondbitcoin.io, etc.) will help immensely on this front...so please don't take this as a knock on the site, just a fact of where we currently are.

To me our current focus is facebook, reddit, maybe youtube users which have already gotten used to a system. Having many of the shadowbans in place on these other sites makes it difficult to directly get in touch with those users in a low cost way.

I think the paid to blog aspect is somewhat of the impediment we run into, with many people being uncomfortable or viewing it as 'too good to be true' situation. Focusing on the community or anti-censorship side of where my mind has been going lately. This could also include a call for 'whats your personal value' posts or show me something culturally unique (like a lion outside a burger king.)

Now I'm just babbling, I'll think this all over and get something more concise in the next day or two. :)

Great points. There is a whole week so take your time. The intention of having the competition is just starting the process of thinking about things.