If I actually get the absurd amount of money I've acquired from posting on Steemit - I will commit 20+ hours per week to find more content and users.
How do you feel about this new platform, which enables us to farm real value from the information that we contribute? Will change the dynamic of social media?
Incentivised InfoFarming.
You certainly will get paid, although the actual monetary value of your payment might not be what it is right now.
You are paid 50% in Steem Power and 50% in Steem Dollars, and like most crypto currencies the dollar value of those Steem Power/Dollars will fluctuate over time.
How do you get paid though I don't get it? Is it dependent on the number of likes you get or what?
Your payment depends upon the votes you receive from other users, and each user has a certain amount of power behind their votes which depends on their holdings of Steem Power. If someone with a lot of Steem Power (commonly referred to as a whale) likes your post and upvotes it, you will see a big increase in your pending payout.
Also, even if your post itself is not upvoted, if it triggers a good discussion and a comment to your post gets upvoted, you get 50% of the rewards of that comment. I recommmend having a look at the white paper for a more in-depth look at how the system works.
Your thoughts are a proof steem will work as designed, and that will be awesome! Instead of just passively consuming content, everyone will want to help bring or sort out valuable content, and the curation will be more effective than anywhere else. I think steem has changed the rules of the game.