I miss the days when Steem was all about content creators and content curators. Today, it's become a free market for opportunists and developers. There's still some great content here, but few care to reward them anymore. This is understandable, of course, the crypto world revolves around greed, and it's clear where the money is. But that also means, this is no longer the right platform for people like me, who joined Steem for content.
Today, a vast majority of the active Steem Power has been delegated out to vote buying services, developers, and SP rentals. Curators have been squeezed out of the reward pool. Established curation projects like steemSTEM and OCD have minimal delegations, while others like Curie have no delegations at all. Combined with the high SBD price, self-voting has gone through the roof. A year ago, 0.42% of all votes were self-votes. Today, this figure is up an alarming 1,600% to 7%. Mind you, this is all votes - this is perhaps even more dramatic when considering only top level posts. Who could blame them, of course? It's orders of magnitude more profitable to lease SP indiscriminately.
In a nutshell, this has become a platform openly hostile to content creators and curators.
The question, then, does a social platform on a blockchain that pays money for content even make sense? There are two options here -
a) Probably not. This will become a niche market of crypto speculation and opportunism. It'll thrive, probably be a multi-billion dollar blockchain, but it'll never be about content. As an investor, that's quite alright.
b) This is just a fad, and it'll revert back to the good old content-centric days. Hivemind/Communities will be a solid product, be managed well, and Steemit Inc will start delegating to curators just as much as developers. SMTs will ignite several communities.
All the evidence suggests b) is delusional at this stage, and a) is the way that Steem, and indeed, all blockchain projects are headed. I have seen a slow and long descent down this trajectory and don't see any signs of reversal. Still, there's a glimmer of hope things will get better.
Till then, this is no longer the platform for me. Should I leave Steem? Probably. But am I giving up just yet? Not really. Even a small amount of the reward pool allocated to content creators and curators is better than nothing.
(PS: I do get the feeling some have misread my narrative here. So, I should do the responsible thing and point out just as well - Steem is a unique platform with massive potential. I go on this rant only because I believe in Steem. I'm not going anywhere!)
Steemstem that promotes good well written scientific posts that take hours if not days -> delegation from steemit inc=o
Dmania that promotes memes that are stolen or take 1-2 mins -> delegation from steemit Inc = half a million...
Enough said.
Put that way, it fuels even more my irritation lol!
Is there a way we can influence someone into, or do something about changing that balance (as a united Steemstem group for example)?
Damn, just remembered that you wanted some seeds. Can't remember If I replied to you or not, are you on steemit.chat or the steemstem discord?
Don't ask yourself what Steemit Inc can do for you, ask yourself what you can do for Steem.
(note: I do not speak for Steemit Inc, in case anyone mistakenly thought I did/do)
Let me try to bring my two cents to the discussion.
What we (@steemstem) are trying to do: creating a science lover community on the STEEM blockchain. And by this, we have in mind a community including top scientists who can share their knowledge, their work, with the general audience on the blockchain.
By community, we do not only mean promoting good content (which we manage to do more or less anyways, thanks to the support we managed to gather here and there (and for which we are thankful to our supporters)). This also means having people exchanging with each others on the chat, discussing about science, etc... It is a real community. It goes beyond the curation group effort.
Now, what can we do for steem? Well, promoting steem through crazy meetups (like having the first steemstem meetup 100 meters underground inside the LHC at CERN where general public cannot even go, even if they ask...) is something we can do. Some of us have connections in the academic world, allowing this to happen. I like to believe this is something good for Steem. Of course, this is my opinion (probably shared by some of us).
Now to come back to the initial message.... To achieve what we did so far, to get where we are today, I am personally working (yes, we can call that a work at this level) more than 40 hours per week. The same holds for most of the people in our team (we are of about 20 today). Our impression is that Steemit inc (not steem) does not even care about that. We have never heard anything from them. Not a single sound.
This is what @trumpman said. Sometimes it is frustrating to see where the big delegations go, especially knowing the work we do (for mostly free).
That's the most convincing argument I have heard yet for what anyone can do for Steem.
Well said sir!!!
Well, that's what we have been doing for a long time now, and what's we will keep doing, regardless of, if any, the outside support we get :)
Thank you for posting @liberosist.
These are the thoughts we at Steemit will invariably process on as Steemit takes on more and more people. Appreciate your articulating your thought process and compiling it in a composition.
Creme will always rise to the top.....sometimes it just takes a while. ^__^
Some posts which are quality will never be approved by Curie.... however one should not give up........even if not approved by one or more organisations especially if one thinks that they are indeed bringing value to Steemit.
Thank you for the opportunity to think on these things.
Indeed I do hope for Steemit that quality outweighs rubbish every single day.
Cheers.
Interestingly enough, I could have written the exact same post... I totally share your thoughts here.
Curation groups that can really make a difference are barely supported (this can be easily checked by verifying where the big delegations go), the work behind these curation groups (that ranges up to several hundreds of hours a week!) is barely noticed and even less recognized, and so on.
I personally still want to work to make a difference, like all my steemstem colleagues by the way. There is a huge potential on the STEEM platform through the social network facet. I however cannot tell what the future will be. I hope things will change in the right direction.
This became more and more clear to me as I started spending more time here. I personally was able to sink myself into several communities pretty quickly through MSP and Open Mic and eventually Curie, and as a result have been able to earn with my creative posting. But as I rose up in the ranks it was pretty obvious that content creation was not really the name of the game. When I hear people describe Steem as a blogging platform I think that is a poor description. You can blog on Steem, but really that is not what any current iteration of a Steem front end excels at. Absolutely this is a social media network and the social side of the game is what controls payouts, not the content.
For me personally I would create content at more or less the same rate with or without Steem, with or without compensation for it. I blogged for years on two different pen and paper RPG blogs, and I posted music and art to Facebook and yes even Myspace before that. I wasn't doing it for money.
That being said, the presence of money in the ecosystem does change the experience and for me the choice was clear, I have spent more of my energy in curation efforts just because I personally would love to see creative endeavors pay off for people. Truly creative people will create anyway. But wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where artists didn't have to starve? Where the value that art and music and ephemeral culture have in human society is actually recognized? These things are universal for a reason.
I have never been one to give up hope, I look for the clearest path to the result I want to see and I try to actualize that path. I have put my energy toward projects like @curie and my own @r-bot and @humanbot because I think there are enough creative souls out there that this thing can still reach critical mass. I think there is room on Steem blockchain for many kingdoms. There is no reason dmania can't have their corner of memes, and utopian its developers, and dtube and dlive their vloggers, alongside healthy and thriving communities / sub-communities of authors, poets, artists, musicians, film-makers, dancers, crafters, creators. We just have to make it happen. Many of us are actively working toward making it happen.
I know you are one of them @liberosist and thank you for not jumping ship.
Much love - Carl
Carl, I noticed your involvement in the platform for a while now, and what you do here is really admirable. With a little more people like you on Steemit, liberosist probably wouldn't have thought about writting this post.
@liberosist, I really needed to read your words this morning. I had my first strike of negativity about Steemit this week: When I write a post, it's easy 8 to 12 h work of effort to create something new, so I can't post more than twice a week. I don't complain because i do get some payout, but I am starting to be fed up to see low quality content that takes less than 1h to create take such huge fractions of the reward pool. Basically, taking the revenue out of the mouth of real content creators. Is it really worth it? or should I revert back to other content creation platforms where I used to invest time and effort (Udemy, Pond5 etc.).
For now I am sticking to Steemit, because since I discovered it in October, this amazing idea felt like a breath of fresh air on the Internet. I am sticking to it, because I want to see such an idea become mainstream, propelled by the magic of Blockchain tech. I am sticking to it because it also fuels my own creativity. I am sticking to it because coming from the indie music world, I know how it is hard out there, and Steemit does provide a door to success that would otherwise be closed for even the most talented of musician... Iam sticking to it because the revenue incentive allows talented people to take of their time and share their views and knowledge with others etc. Yet, all this provided if the the cancer of greed does not ruin it all...
So I am staying on the boat too, to fight for what I think is a beautiful idea.
You are one of the good ones here for sure @muphy and it is an honor to be in the boat with you! Much love - Carl
Thank you for the kind words Carl :-).
In return, I believe it is people like you that keep the original spirit of the platform alive. There are others too, and I am really glad about that. Together, we are like a force, above greed, living on this platform, trying to protect it.
Maybe we are the seeds of a leftist intellectual branch of anarcho-capitalism :-)!
We could focus all our effort on creating and curating content. But for as long as I've been on steemit, creators and consumers have found the UI/UX too poor to spend a lot of time finding and consuming content (finding being the worst part).
This will have to be addressed before the STEEM can grow into the mainstream. As it seems steemit inc and Ned would rather see alternative front ends and businesses succeed rather than steemit, it makes sense that they will, for the time being, prioritise this as it is crucial for people to actually want to come and consume content here.
I have spent a lot of time with active curation projects. I see what incredible work they do to dig deep to find good content that deserves rewards. However, despite a post being great and thus receiving something like a 50$ worth of upvotes, it still gets next to no views and only a few comments typically by the curation team themselves. Is that sustainable in the long run? Sure, it may help retain quality content creators, but it does little, imo, to make the blockchain more engaging, which will be required for the whole business model and value proposition to hold. Currently, it seems to me that vested upvotes means close to nothing unless you get to trending, so curating content won't do much for the active use of the site unless the user interface and content discovery is drastically different. Which I guess is what we're all hoping for with communities.
Anyways, my point is that if steemit inc would rather see other Apps solve this problem, or know that it will eventually be solved with communities, then what we see currently does make sense.
My brother is a computer genius and has been into blockchain tech since 2013. as a hobby only. Weirdly he didn't know about steemit. I discussed about it at Christmas with him (I discovered Steemit in October).
Yesterday he told me that he finally received his a super server with impressive characteristics. He bought it to run a Steemit node.
With the Steem blockchain at his finger tips, he asked me what app would be the most useful for the community. I didn't hesitate: An explorer to search and classify content.
I hope he will have time to look into it. Maybe we could implement a star system independant from the payouts and that would be in control by a high quality curation system like Curie, Steemstem and others. If we moves forward with the idea, I will post to get input from the community.
Sounds great. Personally, I don't see a future in content being ordered based on vested votes. It may make sense in terms of making the STEEM token and STEEM Power valuable, but it doesn't result in content that people want to consume being brought to them naturally.
The best would be a front end where people can subscribe to curators, not just follow people. Then one could create a feed that prioritizes content discovered and upvoted by the curators you like. Perhaps I want one feed where I can see whatthe people I follow are up to, and another where I am given content upvoted by a selected few curators I believe finds what I would like to find myself.
That is just a great idea. I would even go up to proposing 3 feed tabs:
1/ The current feed based on people one follows (i.e. like a set of TV channels)
2/ A curator feed as you suggest, basically that would contain trusted guilds like Curie or Steemstem and Steemians that re-steem a lot things of interest to oneself. Quality curation guilds should be funded in delegated SP by Steemit.inc.
3/ A personal favorite feed, that contains the people a user interacts a lot with and does not want to miss anything about.
All this would be on the personal dashboard: The follower would know he is followed by the user, yet without knowing in what category he or she was placed in.
In my opinion, that could allow, in time, an improvement in the quality of the content viewed and rewarded, and encourage authors which are consistent in quality. Those of the followers that really like a content creator's work would be able to make sure never to miss anything...
And all this in addition to a real search engine (note to self: bug my bro so he gets really into it ;-))
All these are great ideas, but it's actually kinda funny how obvious a subject-subscription layout of some kind - any kind - should be a thing. Much of the mainstream websites offer this, from Twitter to Linkedin, wordpress to minds.
People don't want to browse through random shit for an hour to find a couple of things of interest. People don't want to be told what they might want without any prior context. Even facebook, wechat and Windows 'learn' what you like with experience watching your every move.
I want to join Steemit, meet like-minded people and read things that I personally find intriguing... it's not that hard =/
I am still hopeful that at some point good content will be rewarded accordingly. I am just here for almost 50 days and I am proud to say that I provided good contents (got curie'd once) but most of the time my content are hanging in mid-air. Then there are others who just posted a meme or a grabbed photo, original photos but blurred, low quality yet they are earning better than my posts.
Is it safe to say unfair?
Agree that good post will be rewarded but this is not a case if you are new user. Main problem of Steemit is that new users without money invested in SP will advance very hard. Their posts, even great ones will hardly be seen.
@cicbar: One reason with the struggle is the misconception. Those who invited them to steemit gave high hopes of earning huge.
I am not talking about earnings. Look how many views, not votes, have posts from new users without SP even if they are really good posts.
It’s discovery that is the issue here. Building subtags and a good follow list helps, but if you’ve only got Trending and Hot to guide you, it’s quite a slog. Curation accounts can only do so much. Also doesn’t help that Steemit tends to only return the last 7 days worth of posts in the tag views. Yeah, stuff is outside of the reward window (comments still accrue), but sometimes I just want to read stuff and see people!
Agree😁
Does SP somehow get your posts in front of more eye? I’m pretty new and had some support through curie, but when I look at my articles the amount of people actually looking at them is pretty low.
No but with high SP your vote is worth more and if you comment or post something and upvote yourself, your comment or post will be at higher place.
There's no concept of fairness in a free market like Steem. That said, if there were a 100 Curie-like curation projects and individual curators, maybe a lot of really good content will be discovered. Steem does offer curation rewards for that.
I truly agree sir. I just hope also that these new curation efforts doesnt require payments just like curie.
There's a lot of plagiarism going around, but if it's about money, what can you do? There will be constant influx of people, who see this platform as a $ making machine, but without the good content there's no future for steemit really as the value of steem can only go up in the long term if steemit becomes valuable through its content. Also how much can you speculate on crappy or stolen posts? I fully believe it's possible to solve this problem through community action or another hard fork.
Let's hope for that @conradino23 and also, maybe helping out @steemcleaners do their crusade to combat these low quality stuff
hell i found a 50word short story the other day that stole a famous line attributed to Hemmingway. The poster tried to be all, "i didn't know" and "I changed it".
Changed one word. Still got like $5 for the post. Pft.
Real content is rarely rewarded but projects that focus on cheap and dirty content is often over rewarded. To create content take effort for thought and unfortunately, "ain't nobody got time for that", they would rather post a stolen meme and get an $80 upvote for it, or an arbitrary update to some project and get $900.
Those that are producing decent content are getting squeezed out of the system and in favor of what every other platform already offers for free. Sure it may attract more users in, but quality of user matters and unfortunately, here there are many leeches at every level of the food chain.
People want as much as possible for as little work as possible.
If looking long, the platform and indeed the future of work cannot last this way as essentially without real content, nothing moves and it becomes a tired and wornout concept with no value.
I have done my best, do my best and will continue to do my best to produce content of value across several areas but, who actually cares?
some still do. though not enough.
There are some but how many are really willing to support great content anymore and if there is no support, who is going to write it? I could earn just as much bid-botting a selfie as spending hours thinking and developing each article.
How are those who produce consistently meant to compete long-term?
I feel you brother.
What i tell myself is that perhaps Steemit (the website) has reached a large enough size that simply having good content isnt gonna cut it anymore. New users are constantly coming in, and with them more "competition" of to everyone's attention. of course, im not denying the bad side of human greed though that really represents a small portion of the users (influential as they are).
I like to believe that Steem is now at a size larger than we all can comprehend, there's always activity going on now. We might one day see an ecosystem akin to Medium.com, Instagram, even Youtube or Facebook, where the rules will be nothing like we have now.
As for the "passive income" SP abusers that delegates to bid bots, im positive that soon the ROI wont be as pretty, and people start jumping off the bid bots in search for higher gains opportunity. As for trying to keep Steem a "gift economy" platform (as coined by @stellabelle), we all know what to do. Most of us just dont do it because well..... it doesnt pay much.
But who knows, things might turn around.
As for me, i'm honestly still think myself as starting out and learning the social media game.
The problem is that once creativity is squashed, it becomes a grey army of mediocre.
well... creativity and quality (from a content point of view) is fully subjective.
I can love a meme image over how meta and dank it is and it can be poop to others, maybe it is poop and is exactly the reason i like it at that particular moment.
I've never made big money with my content so far and i'm okay with it. I know there are people that supports my work and its a matter of finding the right crowd that loves what i do. or maybe what i do needs to be improved, or more people needs to know what i do.
Still, looking at the big picture, knowing how things are like out there for content creators. I rather stay here and make the best of it.
Well, as a minnow who has benefited from your curative efforts in the past, I certainly hope you stay around and fight the good fight. The rant's totally understandable, and it sucks, but pressing forward and doing what each of us can is the only thing that, at the end of the day, can change anything. :)
Maybe it was never really about content. I hope that isn't true, but we have to consider the possibility. If you wanted to set up a system that rewarded content purely on the basis of quality, would you create steemit as we see it today?
I like to think that steemit's ability to attract new users is based on quality content, but when I look at other social media, that strikes me as a little naive.
As for your situation, that's your call. But I'd be sad if the number of people here who actually cared about content, including yourself, dwindled away - because you are right, when that happens, steemit will stagnate, and there won't be any point in being here - not for me at least.
Quality is subjective, and yes, in the early days a lot of SP was devoted to upvoting content people liked. Now, most of it is self-voting, renting to random people, vote buying services, etc. So, yes, it was about content when first imagined.
A friend told me the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. While extrinsic (money & fame) motivators are attractive and will lead you to do things you don't normally do, it's not sustainable. Intrinsic (passion) motivators will allow for consistency - an important thing to have when you're in it for the long term.
Assuming that Steemit will last for a considerable amount of time and that the passionate creators remember that their worth isn't tied to the number of upvotes they get, they will stay.
But then again, the chances of these assumptions happening at the same time is low. But like you, I'll hold on to that little glimmer of hope.
It's still early days. Content creators should absolutely stay and build their audience on Steem.
I'm glad I was able to join steemit when the value of both steem and steem dollars were below $1 USD. That way, I was able to observe how steemians behave in both situations.
I always motivate my fellow steemians to always make quality contents regardless of the payout. But I sometimes feel down when I see those drama in the trending page. I'm somewhat disgusted to see that those who are supposed to set examples due to their reputations and SPs are those who abused their power.
Like @thegaillery and @legendarryll, I still have that glimmer of hope that those who make quality contents will stay in the platform. In @bycoleman's words, as long as quality contents are sorted, curated, and well-compensated, Steemit will grow and thrive. I still have hope that others will follow the example set by Curie.
Let's just hope for the best and cross fingers that the Tragedy of the Commons will not totally engulf Steemit as it did in the real world.
Ahh! The Tragedy of the Commons. I really hope not!
Building your audience seems like a good goal to tie your Steem efforts to.
Adding to this, research shows that giving people money as a reward for volunteer work is dangerous because they tend to forget their intrinsic motivation. And the extrinsic motivation will usually be too small to motivate them, unless it's worth a full salary.
This is interesting, @edb. I'd like to observe how this affects people around me, too.
I haven't noticed anyone being hostile with me and I just continue to do things here the way I believe is best for me. Growth is slow, but I don't see it as hostile per se. I've been delegated some SP to help me along. I don't know, I find that some weeks it's tougher to curate rewards from the content I post and other weeks I curate quite a little bit.
Personally, I think that perhaps you are going through a phase yourself. You are seeing the negative aspects while there are still very positive aspects. I see people sometimes complain that they don't make much on Steemit and they make 10 times what I make, 50 times what I make. Sure, it would be nice to make more waves and gain more traction, but I don't see the negative side the same way you do perhaps. I see so much potential and room for growth. I'm grateful for every post'S rewards, be it $0.50, $2.00 or $10.00. Whenever I see something above $1 I get giddy, which is happening more and more.
I'm not saying I won't go through a phase where I won'T be frustrated about certain things. Everyone knows I'm not a fan of bots. But I think things will balance themselves out.
If you feel you need a break from Steemit to gain perspective, it can always bring clarity to you. You may returned refreshed, or decide that something else is in store for you. The decision is yours and must come from you. I cannot tell you what to do, but it does sound as though you need to take a bit of a break, but I wouldn't say quit out right just yet ;)
I understand the sentiment. But if the alternative is Facebook and Youtube, then clearly Steemit is headed in the right direction.
Of course, there will be speculation and botting about these parts. It's human nature to want to try and make a quick buck. But the fight to find an alternative to content monetization is a long one and it has only just begun.
STEEM, KIN, PRL, ABchain, etc. These are just some of the potential solutions out there. Some of them will prevail and help to lift us out of the FB cesspool of garbage and political meme-ization into which we have descended.
Stay with us. And stop transferring your STEEM to bittrex! Delegate it to one of the worthy causes you mentioned in your post. And continue to educate us about this platform.
Thanks.
@liberosist, you have made some very valid points but then, we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I also believe when folks like you keep speaking out against some of this wrong habits, there is every possibility of things changing.
i am of the opinion that the reason for the creation of steemit will always be looked into by those in charge, Mark Zukerberg kept making changes to the facebook platform every now and then, i know we might see a new "face" of steemit in no time.
Thank You
Facebook is mostly terrible, let's not hold that up as any standard. As for garbage, Steem has plenty of it too. I have other accounts, I follow Curie's trail.
I'm curious what you hold up as the standard.
It seems to me that all social media (that I know of) is ruled by attention whores and image obsessed individuals (more accurately - "personalities"), and I don't personally rate those narcissistic characteristics any higher than the greedy side of humanity that we see reflected within this platform.
I think the moral to the story is that humans suck, personally... and I say that only half jokingly.
Steemit has so much potential. The learning curve was just so steep back when I joined in the summer of 2016. I try to get people involved even today. They want to join, but they find it impossible to do so. How can we make it easier to onboard people here? I just know there is a lot of great content just waiting to be unleashed if we could properly educate people about the value of blogging, sharing, and upvoting here.
I stand by my concept solution, that large delegators should put their money into trusted community curators including language communities, steemstem's and curie's and ocd's - nurture their growth.
I worked out once that they can easily make as much profit by offering a paid service where the payer gets priority (but still adheres to quality standards of the curation team in question) or higher upvotes.
That way the whales get income while the platform further encourages content curation and high quality. I think curation communities are the key; the anarchy lifestyle isn't going to work above a certain size and I feel we've already surpassed that limit
I'm glad you're not going anywhere. I appreciate you posting stats like this, and being real about your perspective. Being new, and a die-hard optimist, I tend to look on the bright side as much as possible, but it sure would be nice to see delegation and heftier support for curation efforts.
That said, the curation efforts that are in place are absolutely making a difference. As @carlgnash said in his comment here, I'd be creating content with or without Steemit. Before, my content was barely being seen, and if I was lucky, maybe someone would buy one of my books or come to a yoga class, but trying to monitize my blogging that way also narrowed the scope of what I wrote about. Here I feel free to contribute with whatever subject I want to write about. There are more people interacting with me than ever before, and I've found people I sincerely consider friends. Since joining Steemit, there has been more fun and positivity in my life. For all those reasons it's worth it for me. Thanks for sticking around, and for your efforts to support curation and quality content.
While I share your concerns, there are actually some great bloggers and actual content writers here.
Yesteday I actually started reading through personal blogs from around 2009 from around random places on the internet and I was amazed by how well written some pieces are. Pieces which were written because the writer had something to say and not because he had to say something.
I do believe that once good content creators start inviting other content creators onto the platform, the curation of more varied, high quality content can be within reach. I know from personal experience that those I have invited here will never write about crypto or Steem developing.
It will be exciting to see for sure.
As a car guy, I personally want great car content to thrive on Steemit, so I've recently started actively curating car building content through @buildthreads. I believe if we all just actively curate the content which is most important for us and ignore the temptation of quick gains, Steemit will be a place for real high quality content.
To quote the third line from my post -
I'm well aware of it. I'm also well aware of many wonderful communities forming. My point is, they need to be supported more.
Definitely.
I am with you, but I also rent out my SP.
Why?
If I write a "normal" post worktime 1-2 hours, I get 1-2$
If I find a good topic and write a really really good post, I might make 10$ or even 20$ for 4-5 hours of work.
If I rent out my SP I make that amount too, without any work.
What should an author do that needs to earn money?
Of course, it's a pragmatic option. I choose to not rent my SP and instead follow Curie's trail. But I know I'm losing out money by doing so.
I have been around for a while now and I still can't get my head around it. Money is what makes the steem platform unique, what makes it stand out, what attracts new users and what keeps most of us around. And still, at the same time, it is what is destroying it for exactly the reasons you give.
Don't show me the money, show me the content, the effort of providing something to the community.
It's exactly for that reason we started @steemmakers. But as you say, without big delegations it's hard to swim against the current or even get noticed. Nevertheless, examples show it can be done and it end up to be nice communities that care about something else but speculation. We aim to do the same in our niche.
My best guess is that it won't evolve in either direction and will stay as it is for a while. Like it or not, where there is money and people there is greed.
I think once SBD goes down to $1, and Steem passes $10, content creators and curators will dominate the system. At the moment Steemit is too awkward to use and succeed at for creators. As the hivemind and mobile app are released and STEEM price goes up, it’ll make it a lot easier for creators to bring in money for their work, regardless of the bad distributions and fucked up delegation renting. Hang in there, it’s coming once the platform finally gets out of its clunky phase.
I sincerely hope this winds up being the case. The investment mentality behind the explosion of the SBD (a phrase which sounds awful absent this context) is clearly the primary driving factor in the current climate. It's part of the reason I've started switching over to writing 'Power Up' instead of '50/50' posts, to show I'm not in this just to try and make money, but to genuinely grow my ability to grow the platform. I'll still do the 50/50 from time to time, because it's useful to have some SBD sitting in the account just in case, or to be able to pick up Steem when it's cheap, but I think concentration on growing our own individual account power is the faster way to bring about change. I may be wrong, but it's a risk I'm willing to take. :)
I agree. But it’s actually smarter to do 50/50. For one, you’ll build your SP much faster this way when SBD is high, secondly it floods the market with more SBD which will help bring SBD down.
Hmmmm...I had not considered the market flood as a way to bring down value. I may need to revise my strategy. :)
As the potential of Steem as a blockchain is basically endless I see room for true content makers, which I consider myself to be part of, and the opportunists. But we do need more delegations and might have to be very very connect with one another to sort of 'make' it on the platform. 'Making' it is a relative thing though. The 'opportunists' will have a different money goal to start with, the small content makers might have a lower expectation of what they will gain on the platform anyway. And they might be happier with their rewards than those with higher expectations and higher rewards.
At least, that's what I experience here. I hope it will stay that way :-) I might change my perspective on this on a week by week basis - I too see truly great content being overlooked and truly useless content getting the highest rewards.
no invention can solve human greed, not unless we found a way to break thermodynamic laws and create infinite energy, Perhaps even then it's still not enough.
Perhaps it the pain of being the first blockchain of its kind, perhaps its the nature of who decentralized things go, perhaps its just the ecosystem finding a balance and opportunist profiting off the swings.
if there is any consolation, Im sure the idea of a decentralized tokenized model social media will continue, even if steem goes to die. Who knows... content creators don't really care what platforms they are on anyways as long as the platform is there and it works.
Steem is the best content based social media platform to date. doesnt mean im not keeping my eyes on up and coming contenders..
What attracted me here is it's uniqueness of combining crypto and content. I still believe in what this platform was made for and it made it possible for me to revive my passion in photography and improve writing which is also something that always wanted to do. There are like less than 500k users here at this time if I'm not mistaken and when the millions out there wakes up everyone would want in. Which would make it impossible to get your content noticed. Still I believe in it for me the best part of this platform is doing what you love. The audience is here reward or non as long as you are loving what you are doing. Sharing experiences, life, beauty and everything under the sun that sometimes we fail to notice the reward is just a bonus. I could say that this platform has only just begun. Full steem ahead!
Yes yes remember the good old days were the reward pool was more fair to minnows and original work were really valued.
Too bad,it keeps depreciating daily.
Recall when curie delegation was no more, we all thought it would come back anytime soon or someone with a high enough sp will delegate some seeing the work of curie and how it has been a great help to steemit as a whole.
Well its never too late unless you decide it is.
Till then I look forward to having such glorious days once more were content curators were cherish and welcomed rather than the present system been run by few, although when money is involve, its right for humainty to want it all.
I joined in june of last year and I've been having a blast so far. I wanted try something new and veer away from the main stream social media platforms like facebook and instagram.
On Steemit, I've connected with like minded individuals and been overall networking to get my work out there. From what I just read, it seems that I'm missing something, I'm still new to all of this, and I try not to pay attention to all the drama but as of lately its been more present.
All I pretty much want to do is share my art work and gaming with the people of this platform, and I would hate to see something great go down because of certain individuals. I've seen you a lot last year in the ztest chat, but haven't really gotten to know you. It would be nice if you were more present in the chat @liberosist.
(〃￣ω￣〃ゞ
Isn't it a bit hypocrite saying these things when you self upvote your own post and probably have an automatic curation trail following you (that probably made you rich in steem in the first place) ?
I refrained upvoting your post since the payout is already high enough as it is in just over ONE hour (it's probably gonna make more than I ever made on steemit in total) and MANUALLY upvoted several comments from people here instead.
I don't want to come over hostile but cut the bs man..
Thanks for upvoting the comments, much appreciated.
All I'll say is, I have been on Steem since July 2016, I have participated in many projects, made many friends, and gained over 5,000 followers. It's not unexpected that people would vote for my content. I would point out that I'm more of a middle-class blogger here, there are plenty of people who do much better than I do. I don't post often. There's nothing wrong with self-voting as long as it's not rampant - the feature is there for a good reason. You'll see that I have given out thousands of votes over the last month, some myself, most through following great curation trails, for maybe a couple of self-votes.
All that said, I do agree that not self-voting would have sent a better message. But on the other hand, it would get lesser visibility. So that's a trade-off I have to make. And of course, the high SBD price factors into it too.
Your welcome, I like reading up on valuable comments.
And thanks for opting the harder choice of replying instead of flagging me and be easily done with it for the criticism I made.
The reason for it is because lately my view of it is that a removal of anything automated, like bots and bidbots and having a maximum cap of delegation or outright removal of it in exchange for a better structured, easy to acces topic tree would be better for Steemit's future.
the trending, new, hot and promoted tabs just don't cut it.
I still not have an easy way to browse and curate my most favorite topics, but have to bookmark them in my browser instead.
As for the comparison of other steemians value, some may have overtaken you but it's still a number that shouldn't be ignored. If I gave in into comparing myself too much to others on here I probably just would have quit long ago.
In the end it's the content that should matter, not your net worth otherwhise a plethora of other cyrptocurrencies are widely available to speculate on.
I don't see this platform being best meant for content creators or curators any longer. Its more for investors. With SMTs, anyone can come and create their own coin with their investment and do whatever they want to do. So for example, BMW can come here and put millions and give steems to its customers. And they can utilize any way they want to , be it for sell or self vote or what not.
Excellent post, what if self voting was forbidden? I realize many have multiple accounts, but it still would be a step forward.
There could be a cultural shift where rampant self-voting is frowned upon. You can already see this happening with many people annoyed with Haejin.
True, maybe a restriction or limit would help, but ideally a cultural change is best.
A lot of curation guilds and communities has been created but have not received support from the likes of Ned or Dan who is busy flagging each other.
They would have to rely on some good intentioned whales and dolphins in order to get delegation or vote trailed in order to make it appealing for people to create good content.
You get someone who works on a good quality content piece for more than 2 hours and get cents and then you have a person who creates memes gotten from the net and is given 10 dollars because the delegation for it is so high.
So what recourse would the person do but join teh bandwagon and do memes as well. We came see this trend with dolphins and whales as well
Create short Zappl or dmania content, upvote the hell out of it and rack the rewards.
I have to be honest getting curied was life changing for me but afterwards it was harder because the bar was raised and no matter what I did I just couldn't get it again and so in order to grow I had to change my tactics from being a content creator to an investor.
I try to keep writing good content but I have been boosting it to the trending page in order to get more votes and followers.
It's pointless to create golden shit posts like a two paragraph and one image post of Marvel characters 5 times a day and get votebid for it because no one will see the value and the posts is basically a bidbots graveyard of confirmation of bids but little to no Engagement whatsoever.
Don't even get me started on those that recieve a whale bot because they were are in in the trail or they vote beg. Then they shit post because they know that they supported so quality goes out the window. Imagine 5 shitty content and it get upvote then you are a alone again.
Then there are those community incubation projects that if you are not a member then you don't get support. It disrupts the whole idea that anyone can be supported if they show the right skill.
My community is no different that try to strengthen itself on its own because no one cares for it.
Incubation projects are so busy Circle jerking each other to care outside of their clique.
It is a rather pessimistic view and it either you adapt and suffer for the lack of support. In the end people like me are forced to bid for bots in order to have a chance to be successful in Steemit.
It's a sad truth.
I agree entirely. It is far too much about how can I get the biggest return on investment on my SBD / STEEM, and less about "look at this amazing, original piece of writing (or art, or whatever); I appreciate it (and the individual behind it), therefore they get a reward.
I foresee that self voting will increase as the power continues to centralize.
To clarify, self voting via pay-for-vote bots.
It’s going to be a bit weird. Apps like Steepshot and Zappl are going to create volume in terms of bite size quick fire posting, which diluted the Steemit view. I also have queries about the value of meme content. They say that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. Transfer that to meme-ing. Signal to noise goes well down.
We’ll see what communities do I guess. There will be value in collectives branching off and becoming more bespoke.
I wonder if we would be better off without delegations all together? Of course people could just do private rentals and most projects are established enough people may feel safe enough doing it, but it could certainly be a start. I do think there is hope once the STEEM values rise higher and SBD starts dropping, it will hopefully make voting buying and paid delegations no longer profitable. Then hopefully we'll start seeing content rewarded solely on it's merit.
Well, mathematically speaking this is another example of a less than ideal Nash equilibrium: Once there is the theoretic possibility of abuse without repercussions even honest people with good intentions have little incentive not to abuse the system themselves (because they would be at an even greater disadvantage if everybody else is abusing and they are not)
One quick solution to discourage self-voting would apparently be to categorically void monetary rewards on that. But cultivating good behaviour in people in general is a whole other challenge.
Things change and we must adapt to it. I think good creators are still rewarded in this platform. We just have to learn what other's want too and not just what we want. I agree it would be a niche market just like others successful platforms there in real world but steemit being a niche market is part of "change" and development. Without these developers, investors, bots then steemit would never go to a different level. I think these changes are necessary for growth in long term.
Let's face it, this is about "profit" and the more profit people see in this platform, the more people would come in. And the more people coming in, the more opportunity for content creators to market their content. We just have to know what other's would love to read and not just knowing what we love to write.
I believe this is baked into the equations that comprise the essence of STEEM. In order for Steemit to have the kind of democratic representation of ideas that it idealizes, all users would have to have equal voting power. Because power is centralized, the only way for content to compete with the favorites of the powerful is to buy influence from powerful entities.
It is interesting to note that "trending" and "hot" seem to weight things more toward how much money they've taken in rather than how many views and upvotes they have received. Don't you find that interesting? It creates an incentive for people to pay real money to purchase the currency to promote their own posts, and it's about competing for the attention of the heaviest voters, as opposed to the most voters.
So, this is not a place for people to get paid for their content. However, this is an awesome place to promote your own content with your own money. If you have something that you want people to hear, this is your forum. It's really cheap. Really fucking cheap. If you put in enough money, it's basically free, and you can cash that money out later, perhaps at a huge profit if you time it right, so it's an awesome fucking place for wealthy people. I wish I had the kind of money to put myself on top of trends.
Not only can the rich promote their own ideas, but they can make other peoples' ideas look popular, so they get tremendous control over what is visible in the search algorithms.
I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. I think it's great that we have a public space where it's relatively cheap for people to promote an idea in any subforum they want. It's not great for content creators to make a living, in normal circumstances, but it's a great place for them to advertise something they have to share.
If you're here for the money, then you'd probably better already have a lot of it. But, just wait until STEEM gets real popular and big corporations start buying up the coin for their accounts and then start donating rewards for people to like and share their brands...
Thought provoking at best. There is an element of greed and selfishness built into the crypto world. It's alarming how one too many who join Steen and other crypto platforms are driven not by the desire or passion to add value via quality content creation but by the nagging passion to make money atop of others. @liberosist I must admit this was one of the key drives that drew me into Steem a few days ago. I have always believed that it's best to make value now. Reward will always come. Always.
Leaving Steem is pretty out of the question. Somehow it has helped me shape my writing skills and propelled me to work even harder. I do a lot of research before I post. I do a lot of reading and writing before I post. I believe hard work pays off anytime and anywhere. This to me is still a strong side to Steem.
It's quite disheartening to watch nonsensical posts in broken English or with nothing to say, scoring 50 dollars. Also, if you are not really clued up on and writing about Steem, blockchain or crypto in general, you stand little chance of building up anything as a minnow without the means to buy or rent SP.
I can also copy and paste the latest crypto charts and tell people what they're looking at, but my lack of influence and lack of power of my followers would prevent me from making $700 by stating the obvious
I'm not saying my posts are the best, but it's impossible to get noticed.
I'll carry on and post, but will not spend hours on a post again any time soon. I have a jar of pennies which is probably a better investment than posting original content.
I know I'm new, but working at a loss can't go on for long. I want to create content and am not interested in the time-vampire that is curating, but maybe I should start focusing on developing that skill...
It is again the problem: Do you want to enrich the community or do you want to enrich yourself?
Selfvoting is not good for the community, but profitable. Boosting is not good for the community, but profitable. More downvoting would be good for the community, but it is not profitable.
Not sure how @dan was thinking it would ever turn out any other way. Steem has the exact problems I thought it would have when I heard about the project.
But hey - I got free Crypto! So Hurray! Right?
Dan was extremely naïve. He thought all people are good and care about their reputation. In reality, the crypto world attracts greedy assholes. All they really care about is getting rich, and they'll abuse every last system to get there.
Communities can give people access to the content they really want, so those who aren't so obsessed about the money can use the platform for what it was intended for - a social network.
That was what we were told when we were being introduced to the platform. Create good content and get rewarded. Coming in and then struggling with cents makes some of us loose believe in ourselves, we start to ponder on what we think is actually a good post. Is it us? like are we whack? or the system is justr fucked up?
We thank God for curation teams like curie, steemstem, ocd etc.
Please dont, people like you can still make a difference
@liberosist, I admit that I’m saddened to read this because, like you, I also believe in Steem and, as a writer, am all about creative content.
In the 3 months that I’ve been here I’ve had misgivings, sure. What’s kept me has been the lifeline thrown me by curators—like Curie & Ocd—but, also, high-minded, noble individuals who value culture, art, philosophy, etc...
I remind myself the world has never been fair, nor is it easy for artists, anywhere: wrestlers and bodybuilders make millions while theatre-trained actors starve off broadway and writers, sigh, don’t get me started. 7 books into the game and still struggling to keep my head above waterline...
But, we who value quality content and human connection hang around for other reasons and, most days, we can justify it to ourselves....
I admit I don’t understand some of what you detail above (like SP rentals) but I get the general gist and hope against hope that things change.
Cheers,
Yahia
Hey @liberosist , this great helpful article to this community.
I would like to add a quote here , that may be helpful to bloggers on this platform;
Why You Should Upvote Comments!!!!
I've noticed alot of people doesnt reward their followers, and their commenters on here.
It's a shame.
When someone takes the time to not only read your post but to leave a comment. Even throwing your small vote their way does a lot of great things...
They are More Likely To Follow You
I'm not saying you should upvote every single comment you get. I try and look for those that I feel provide value to the post. When they see that you upvoted their comment and they will be rewarded as a result. This encourages them to follow you; Then you'll have a regular on your post!
You can grow your followers so that they can grow you;
If they choose to keep their Steem in their account, They may power it up. If you continuously are upvoting their great comments, then they will steadily grow overtime. Their vote will be worth even more, and they'll be able to upvote you, The upvotes you gave them helps them grow, so they have more power on the platform.
An easy way to make Steem majestic again:
https://steemit.com/steem/@teamukraine/make-steemit-great-again
Worth noting the shift from 0.4% to 7% self voting (yes, I'm somewhat guilty) is compounded by the hard fork which reduced the effective daily votes from 40 to 10. I know you can do part votes but without outside help that's only for people with 500SP or above - something nearly a year on I still haven't managed.
While I'm a developer myself (not on steemit) I do agree though, I try to reward content, causes and anything which shows initiative - I try not to support anything which stands as an entity in it's own right. Perhaps being British I'm one for supporting the underdog, I want the aspiring to succeed far more than I want the successful to grow.
Yes, the vote power rate is a key ingredient too.
Agree with you but developers can solve this easily. Just split voting power and self voting power to be separate. Many people don’t full power vote for others to save voting power for themselves. If it is separated, problem will be solved.
It's not that simple, people have multiple accounts. They'll just transfer all their SP to a different account. It has to be something more complex, where relationships between accounts are established. However, that may be unsustainable computationally.
This is not my point, my point is that if you have separated voting powers, people would vote more for others because that voting will not lower self voting power.
That was my point. You can't separate a self vote from voting for others.
Let's say you are voting for yourself now, from @cicbar. If what you're suggesting was implemented, you'd simply move all your SP to @cicbar1, and continue as you were. The system wouldn't see that as a self-vote, though it really is one. There are people here who have hundreds of accounts.
Understand, but delegating SP need 7 days to undelegate so it’s not super easy to move SP. Though separated voting power is far for perfect we can agree that it would be better than what we have now...
And if you hold your SP in parts on many different accounts you basically don’t get anything meaningful besides stupid comments and few votes on your own posts.
Interesting post! I am new to Steemit, my main platform being Youtube, so it will be interesting to see how things work out here.
A lot less toxic, but you can still get into "reply-wars" as I did with @liberosist about climate change :3
Ha, this post was more for people who have been here for over a year. Objectively, it's a pretty cool platform, that you must try out. It's just that it could be much better still.
Well. You can sit here feeling defeated, or, open your eyes. It's easy to see the damage those crackhead vote junky dealers are doing to the neighborhood. We all know what happens to those property values. Let them shoot themselves in the foot. Let all those morons who buy and sell votes go nowhere with their lives or their investments. Without addicts, who will buy their junk.
History shows us they fail, so allow it. The good neighborhoods will still thrive. We're all products of our environments anyway. Let them live in in filth. It's what they want, it's what they'll get. The rest of us know what we want. We'll get ours too.
Call me delusional all you want. My blog is doing fine. I see many others doing good as well.
The difference is, this is a free market with no regulation. History shows us such societies have led to rampant inequality and abuse of power. The greedy opportunists rule these worlds. So too, Steem.
Right, but this time they boast and lock their words along with their transactions into a blockchain for all to see.
Earlier I wrote a satirical piece about plagiarists. One thing I mentioned was:
I sarcastically thanked them for being so open and honest with us. It helps.
So whatever. Change the word thieves to greedy opportunists. Say thanks. Done deal.
They don't really care about their words. They'll leave the platform, dump their Steem, and that's the end of that. Instead of prison, they'll probably buy a bungalow in Panama.
Exactly. These words are also locked in, but they mean something.
More people finding out the truth about them leads to them having less influence and maybe a small tent to set up on the curb, in cracksville, where they belong.
Anyway. Thanks for writing this and helping create a bit of awareness. Have a good day.
You have a point there.
But if you take the example of Google which was meant for only search but later on they had to add Gmail, AI, autonomous cars, Android, pixels and all that as it was the demand of time. But what you are trying to say is they didn't compromise on quality of search engine and steemit should not also do that.
Google needed to focus on quality tho because at the core of Google was always speed, sending people away from google as soon as possible.
At which point quality, and developing a whole ecosystem (Google’s main vitality is linked with the Google toolbar) around search became important. In order to keep the user use Google’s search.
As the platform evolved, the product switched from search to advertising sales. At which point the whole ecosystem became a data leech (the product is you), complete with a shared privacy policy across then (IIRC) 61 products.
Yes,that's true but my point is steemit will also have to evolve with the time.
We will have to add more things and we will not only get authors or content creators only on the platform, there will be other users who will use it for their benefit and their way but it is the part of game.
Hopefully steemit can turn it around
I feel the same way as you, and I left steemit for a bit. I just spend less time with it now and do not look at the trending pages. I create original content anyways so steemit is just another place to share it. I make a little bit from it and I am happy with that. The problem comes when you compare yourself to others, so its just better not to.
I know you have muted me so I doubt you will see this. I think you also blocked me on the chat so it's pretty tricky to contact you @liberosist. I tagged you and maybe you'll have a notification of it.
If you do and read this I would be interested to have your thoughts on this. I'll eventually clarify my thoughts on the subject but this is a pretty good start.
https://steemit.com/non-linear/@felixxx/more-n-2#@teamsteem/re-felixxx-more-n-2-20180216t122110302z
In a nutshell, this has become a platform openly hostile to content creators and curators.
nope.
It might seem that way if the content you create is something no one is interested in.