I HAVE QUIT FACEBOOK
When I quit using Facebook on the 1st of July 2016, I had several reasons for doing so. Luckily I just logged out rather than shutting down my FB account, because I ended up needing it to join Steemit
I had bugger all Facebook friends, and most of them were “lurkers” (they never posted anything or even “liked” anything, let alone made any comments. So meaningful interactions were few and far between.
About half of what few friends I had left on FB disagreed with much of what I really wanted to post about, so if I got into subjects like conspiracies such as false flag shootings or “climate change”, or health subjects like low carb diets or the vaccination con, its safe to say I rapidly had less FB friends.
FACEBOOK CENSORSHIP
Another big reason for wanting to avoid Facebook is that it practices full blown censorship – just like Google, Twitter, and Wikipedia, Facebook is censoring and controlling what is seen.
For example, a huge slice of Facebook’s income comes from pharmaceutical companies, so it bans dietary supplements from its shopping system. No supplements are allowed whatsoever – not even vitamin C (yes, I sell supplements and Vitamin C).
FACEBOOK IS A TOTAL WASTE OF TIME
Starting this year with my “less use of FB” resolution, I was going to limit it to one visit per day for a maximum of 15 minutes. What I actually ended up doing (including the time I spent looking at links and videos that came up on my timeline) was two visits most days, for about 20 minutes each. (280 minutes per week)
That’s more than 4 1/2 hours a week, which adds up to over 234 hours a year, or 29 eight hour days over a year. Holy crap. That is not really how I want to be using my time, and seeing it added up like that blew my mind.
STEEMIT VS. FACEBOOK - HOW DO THE NUMBERS COMPARE?
Back in June 2016 when I decided to quit using Facebook, I’d never heard of Sreemit. Now it seems like every man and his dog has been on Steemit for almost a week. It’s growing so fast it defies belief, but it’s till tiny compared to Facebook.
Although Facebook looks like a creative wasteland, while Steemit looks like the new renascence, Facebook has over 1.7 billion users, while Steemit has less than 100 000, so at this point Steemit would still need to get 1700 times more members to be as big as FB.
The sheer volume of users mean than even if only 1% of Facebook users ever really posted anything new on it, that is still theoretically 17 times the activity on Steemit.
THE CONTENT ON FACEBOOK IS UTTER CRAP
That giant pool of Facebook users don’t post much worth seeing, so to me FB was like a giant sponge that soaked up every creative urge in my mind and replaced it with a giant sea of shallow distracting crap.
The biggest reason I quit FB was that I wanted to see new ideas and be inspired by intelligent discussion. That wasn’t exactly coming thick and fast on FB
STEEMIT HAS SO FAR BEEN AN INSPIRATION
Steemit has already amazed me with the quality of the content. I’ve only been aware of Steemit for 48 hours, but I’m already inspired by what I’ve seen here, and I’ve learned more in two days surfing Steemit than I did in the past two years feeding my FB addiction.
A BIT ABOUT MYSELF
OK this is shameless self promotion, but I’m also adding this bit to verify I’m just as real as anyone really is online. My name is Ian Gregson, (AKA SIFT666), I live in Wellington New Zealand, and like to take photos.
I also have a bunch of websites that can all be accessed through this portal:
http://www.frot.co.nz
In 2011 I posted a page about using Facebook, and it’s been consistently popular since. I’ve reused several lines from that page here, so I hope the cute cheetahbot cuts me some slack!
http://www.frot.co.nz/design/computing/facebook/
Thanks for reading, and thanks for all the inspiration.
Nice post. I agree, the quality of content on Steemit is incredible. Silly little memes go viral on Facebook, but they don't really count for much here. The other angle is that, Steemit solves the "clickbait problem", where content producers just create a title and image which is enough to get you to click, make their money from ads, and then who really cares if there is any substance to the post. Here, people have to make content which is truly engaging, so Steemit has killed quite a few birds with one stone.
Welcome to Steemit and have a great day!
Is it the quality of intellectualism and prose, or predominantly the quality that the content matches your interests?
Engaging as in much discussion and spawning communities of like interests? Or appealing to the site-wide most prevalent desires the voter has to upvote if the post games some emotional need the voters have, such as the desire to get others to promote certain causes, the male desire to see girls show their boobs, the "Steem will change the world" meme, etc..
@govspiders:
I'm skeptical for the reasons above.
Both. The assumption in your question seems to be that there is some kind of problem with finding a niche, or having a site that's more popular with certain types of people. There isn't. Actually, that's a good thing, because it helps something become popular faster, and more of those types of people will want to join.
Nevertheless, the range of content on Steemit is also quite wide. People write here talking about art, philosophy, psychology, anarchy, personal secrets, economics. If you really think it's so limited, perhaps you'd like me to link you to a few things which demonstrate the diversity.
Churdtzu your blog posts are an example of that diversity, and your consistent payouts probably reflect that - one of the next things I plan to do is read more of your posts and see what I can learn because you are clearly doing a bunch of stuff right on Steemit!
Thanks @sift666, much appreciated.
It would be a problem if that "Western tinfoil hat, hippie/druggie, nerd backslapping while extracting $ from the collective TO DA MOON" niche is too small to scale the merchant ecosystem that they are relying on to create enough demand for Steem tokens so that we can afford to pay bloggers without imploding the value of the tokens.
I am not interested to read about someone peering at their navel, which is how I characterize most of the content on Steem.
I am reading a lot of it everyday, it is nearly all amateurish crap that I wouldn't read if I wasn't investigating Steem. The great bloggers stand far above, and I read them only when I need to, because they have something important to say. I don't have time to whirl away browsing amateurish blogs daily for entertainment.
I agree with the premise of content quality finding its worth in votes, but I'm concerned with what happens when demand leaves and there is an inability to cash out to all users regardless of an mechanism to lock up their currency.
Yes. When would demand leave though? You mean like, if someone creates something even better than Steemit?
There can't really be an inability to cash out to all users, because the Steem is right there in your wallet. The more likely scenario in that situation would be that the dollar/BTC value of Steem would approach zero.
Because not everyone shares the same interests and they may not find their engaging connections here?
Because the rewards for most users will be less than $5 per month, i.e. meaningless?
Medium reports only 20,000 of its 25 million readers blog weekly. Blogging is not something everyone can do well. So what do the rest of the users do that is engaging?
Which would disincentivize cashing out at some level above zero, because of the cost of cashing out isn't 0.
Not everyone in the world likes Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr or McDonalds. Not everyone has to like something for it to be successful.
I'm not sure where you're from in the world, but $5 is a lot of money to a lot of people around the world. And besides, when a platform is consistently allows the publication of high quality content on the Internet, that's valuable regardless of if you're getting paid to read it.
I think you've answered your own question here. Why is Medium so popular, if only such a small percentage like to write on it?
Yes, agreed.
Have a good one
"So what do the rest of the users do that is engaging?"
It's true and is a valid point. On most media platforms, there is a ratio of 90:10 for consumption and creation respectively. But it is also true that Steemit has forced this creativity up, even if it's partially forced and the only way to excel on this platform. I am very against for-profit platforms because they WILL dry out and it this case they may dry out while you still hold tokens.
Another point I make often is that nobody's personal biased truly matter. ALL of these decentralized, liberated platforms of media and technologies MUST come together through time to facilitate something that serves humanity, not our pockets.
Wicked post, thanks and welcome aboard! All for one and one for all! Namaste
STEEMIT IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN FACEBOOK. :)
I use Facebook only for a chat.
I agree with what you are saying. Steemit will have to be careful lest some push towards making Seamit more like Facebook. We do not need another Facebook.
dubloon135
Great post. I hardly ever use facebook now unless someone DMs me. Also why would anyone want to post there anymore anyway? Even if you only get 1 cent for a post here it is more than you will ever get from Facebook and Steemit isn't stealing all your information either.
Thanks😃
The sobering truth is Steem may only have about 10,000 active users and we don't know how many of those are bots.
Which can be a good and bad thing. Depending on hype, which is coming, whether I agree that it's warranted or not, Steem will be creating an economy based on tokens, that is monitored by bots and large whales.
I love steemit 💙
Thanks for posting a real comment - I think all the others here so far are spam!
Kia Ora
You pulled quite a jackpot after 2 days on here !
I'm looking forward to my curation reward :)
Good job !
0.007 SP so far
still excited XD
Thanks - and thanks for your answer to my update Q as well - are you from NZ too?
No, but I've been there.
Why don't you check my blog ? :)
I have followed you and will read your posts - jeepers that is a lot of posts!
Glad see other awake peoples out there. very enjoyable post from top to bottom. Peace to you and yours........and I sure hope Steemit stays true :)
Thanks😀
I agree ... facebook censorship suck!!!!
I agree with most of your assessment regarding Facebook. I do like the exchange of ideas in the private business groups. I've learned a lot about my new chosen profession in those groups. I do find myself being easily distracted and wasting time though.
What a nice post, such similar thing happened to me. I did quit fb for couple of years ago and enjoying my non-socmed daily life. Yesterday I was "steemed" here, the same place as you noticed which got more inspirations and benefit. Welcome to steemit!
such a great post I also impressed with steemit and it will increase more than Facebook. off course Facebook down and steemit up...
loved your post @sift666 .. I mainly use Facebook to keep tabs on far flung family activities. Although, I have found some groups where links will appear to great resources so not a total time waster.
Steemit has become my first stop of the day to see what has been posted that catches my eye... some days.. too much catches my eye and a second pot of coffee becomes necessary so I can convince myself I was just reading while I had morning coffee
"a huge slice of Facebook’s income comes from pharmaceutical companies, so it bans dietary supplements from its shopping system"
Wow, pharmaceutical companies do seem to spend a lot on advertising on television and internet. Surprised Facebook would ban supplements though because of it. Are they scared of turning off the pharmaceutical companies as advertisers? Seems strange to me as they would probably advertise anyways.
Good point on how much time people waste on FB. You go on there and then get sucked into all the news articles and videos being shared. It's never ending haha.
Yes FB totally changes what appears on everyone's timelines as well as banning advertising that offends their main sponsors (like the sickness/vaccine/drug industry). Posts about Vitamin C for example, are quickly buried under 5 tonnes of elephant dung.
@sift666, what you think of my comment about your blog post?
which one ?
I'm not sure about any of them!
it's all very new to me, but the quality of what I've seen here so far is generally high over a wide range of subjects, and while there is some real garbage here too, it looks out of place in the middle of quality posts.
Thx for the reply.
The one where I quoted you. Did you click the link I provided?
I'd like to hear your comparison to Medium if you feel up for it.
I've never used Medium - I do have a WordPress blog that gets a lot of traffic mainly because I posted some fake porn pages, but it doesn't make any money - http://www.frot.co.nz/design/blog/ - now I plan to post both here on on my existing blog.
Thx for confirming. So if you gush about Steem with its 6400 active users (bloggers and readers/commenters), why would not also consider Medium with its 25 million readers and 20,000 active weekly bloggers?
As a blogger, isn't your goal to reach the most readers. Or do you want to write for a microscopic circle-jerk just because you can earn wow $10 per day.
I agree that we (Western nerds) want to support a platform that stores content on a blockchain which no one can control, but did you know that a few guys control the Steem blockchain? Details matter. And the masses probably don't care about this aspect.
P.S. I wish you good luck and I actually support similars ideals as you want. But I want to be clever about attaining them.
Now I've had a look at Medium, I have a totally negative opinion of it and won't be going back....
Self righteous PC numpties having a martyr self support meeting.
I think Steemit has a potential to change the internet and thereby change the world, because of the way it is set up. Steemit has only been online since March. And if I can earn some money doing it that would be great too.
Interesting. Thanks again for the feedback.
I've read a few important technical blogs on Medium over the past year. So I don't see it as only a politically correct haven.
But what is most revealing to me about your reply, is that exactly as I expected, the Steemians are trying to force their world view onto the world. Sorry that won't scale.
I believe that if we want to change the world, we have to engage with the world. Snobbery and a circlejerk groupthink won't get us there.
Unless you are really good at exploiting the Steememes, $10 per day for an exhausting amount of daily blogging won't change your life (nor the world's).