But... the pool!
We focus so much on the number of tokens being assigned, that we might be missing from that discussion the value of said tokens. In other words, we could have millions of tokens of a specific crypto, but if they are worth one satoshi each, it would the digits would not mean much, at least in the sense that they would not change our lives.
So, when it comes to the exchangeability of Steem, we must remember that it's important that it remains liquid. This means, that maintain a market of people who are interested in buying, who want to buy it. Because if we don't, if our actions are effectively against those sentiments, What can we deduce is going to happen to the value of STEEM as a result?
I'm all for token distribution trust me, I get it, I embrace the ideas, I try to do my part, but I cannot at the expense of my self imposed mission take any part in creating a toxico environment for investments. That makes no sense at all.
Steemians who attack investors
Are guilty of working against their own best interest, and honestly there is nothing too outrageous about me saying that. I've seen this so many times now, that I'm baffled as to why others can't see something so obvious. But, for the sake of this post, so that people understand very clearly where I'm coming from, let me pose some plausible scenarios, or better yet, questions.
What if a big investor backed out, because he or she got attacked? Do we think that would happen today, with the culture that seems to permeate Steem? I think that is very likely. Someone with deep pockets, someone that sees the potential of this blockchain would buy a couple of thousand STEEM to "give it a try". Then watch some videos by let's say Joe Parys on how to use the bidbots, the promotion tool of STEEM, send a post to trending thinking that is the way make an entrance. And then, get insulted, memed to death and what have you.
Can't we see how this worked against the economic health of the platform? The message sent to the investor could be simplified with a "You and your money are not welcome" - Now, I ask you Is this true?, Don't we want investment here?
But, the Trending page!!!
Yes, the trending page, some people are upvoting crap, that's true. But, what is the right response? The adult response? the one that we should take if we want to help the ecosystem, not scare away investors? Is it memes, is it insults? That is the point I'm trying to make.
You would be surprised how many times I've had conversations on Discord with bidbot abusing accounts, explaining them how it does not really work in their best interest to send every single post they make into trending. How many times I've explained that promotions are fine, but not every single post needs to be promoted and that harnessing relationships with people is more productive than upvoting everything to the top with bots.
If it makes sense to them, they might approach it in a more balanced way. If they don't care, then well, I'm going to allow them to be adults and make choices, as I will make mine too. The right approach to a shitpost, like picture of a corn on trending is a flag.
Grant you, we can laugh about it now, but think about what cost we might be paying for it. Are we creating an environment toxic to investment, simply because we assume all these people are evil? or have an agenda?
Return to Balance my friends
Don't assume everyone is evil by default, that is no way to live. Don't attack your own investment, your own token by creating an environment that acts at times like a communist/socialist regime. What happened to the idea of free markets? What happened to the idea of letting people make choices?
Can we believe that our "morality" is somehow superior, while at the same time hurting the very ecosystem we are allegedly defending? - Take a step back, what are you doing? Why? To stroke your ego? For what?
Again I ask... Do you understand fungibility?
• Helpienaut Hangout Monday 8/6/18
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• Open Mic Week 96 - Top 5 Selection and Honorable Mentions
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• Waiting for superman to fix STEEM
How much really has @lyndsaybowes invested in Steemit? From their own cash to SP? How much has @hendrix22, her partner in crime, invested his own "slave" money into Steemit? They act as if they are the rulers of Steemit! They are the Mr & Mrs Jekyll & Hyde of Steemit. By day, they have a front of charitable contributions and postings...but at night, they devour others.
And yet, these two were the ones who shreaked the most, memed the most and spam'd against me the most. The methods used by @lyndsaybowes and @hendrix22 were so dirty! All the while, their circle jerking activities were the most efficient! They haven't changed. They cajoled and stoked, just as they do now, others with SP to do what they couldn't...downvote on their behalf. I have only pitty for @fulltimegeek for having fallen under the wench's spell...he took a large bite out of her shiny red apple!
There are so many who left Steemit because of these two's incessant memes, spam commenting and downvotes on my innocent commenters...where are they now? Because they found these trolls too much, they insisted to leave Steemit and go private with me. Their cumulative powerdown was likely to the tune of over $1 Mil SP. So, these two accounts; @lyndsaybowes and @hendrix22 with barely $10k in SP between them; suffered so many to leave Steemit.
At the end of the day, investors....paying investors make or brake Steemit. AND, if you bought your SP, then you have the RIGHT to vote HOWEVER you want with them. Can I or anyone be changed by being trolled? In a word: NO!
However, the likes of @kabir88 who retaliates with highly focused intention to hurt, defame and libel me and my colleagues; has made posts cointaining fabricated evidence of criminal conduct against my innocent analyst colleague. This type shouldn't exist on Steemit....why? He drives investors away. It's amazing how @fulltimegeek upvotes such a post! Although, I'm not at all surprised at Lyndsaybowes upvoting such deviant posting.
Seems like @Fulltimedick doesn't like what I just wrote! I must have hit a sensitive note called the TRUTH!!
Look at ALL his bots out in force to downvote!
@vimukthi thanks for resteeming this post.
It's exactly what I've been feeling for a while. I've been powering down and cashing out probably 1000-2000 since I came to realize I don't have that much confidence in the management of this chain.
The socialist attitude and hate for investors and advertisers is one of the biggest things.
The fact that the rules of the chain can change very easily through company and witness influence is scary to me. That and the high level of SBD printing which is set to increase at the next hardfork.
I'm sympathetic to the cause steem was created for and think it's an amazing prototype, still using it daily. But without confidence in governance I'm not willing to keep a large % of my crypto locked up in it.
I've moved a lot into BAT because I think they're trying to solve the same problem as STEEM but allow creators to host on any website. It also takes into account advertisers, welcomes both advertising and investment.
Like this article says steem does not feel welcoming to large advertisers or investors. So I may keep posting but won't leave a lot invested here.
After the flag i got from another well known steemian ill still be stupid and try to reply to this.
There exists a divide between powerful people here and those not as powerful. A divide best seen through engagement between classes.
I dont know you Haejin, not in the least bit. You could the best person in the world or the absolute worst one. There is no way for me to tell.
You do your own thing and we all do our own thing. But its not hard to see, and you are also aware of this yourself that your engagement with the community as a important stake holder on the blockchain is really not high.
What happens is that the community seeing someone powerful as you not conforming to their sense of community contribution will revolt.
Its not that you arent allowed to do what you do.. Its that people seem to dislike what you do because they dont tend to acknowledge you as a part of the community. Im just telling you what i see.
Now i know trolling you or flagging you isnt really helping anyone. All those flags could go to a better cause but i hope that you realize that by shifting your focus more towards the community will eventually lower all the revolt you have to deal with and the flags will go away i promise you.
To hell with whoever, geeks or whatnot, they are a megaphone for those without a voice. There are always people that will stand behind anyone that does more for others then they are expected to. Try to get the attention of those and ignore the loud ones..
I really think that will change a lot of things for you and everyone.
Anyways.. Hope you wont flag me... Lost enough payout for annoying Bernie this week.🎻😇
I think it is disingenuous of you to place all of the blame of this flag war on Lyndsay and Hendrix. If you look objectively at your own actions, you will find that you are entitled to at least half of the blame for all of the negative results from this. How many accounts have you wrecked because of this? How many systematic downvotes? When is the last time Lyndsay or Hendrix spammed a meme on your posts? Can we at least make an effort to move forward?
ANY holders of SP have a right to VOTE however they want. This includes the right to downvote posts based on disagreement with rewards. While the value of the vote may differ according to SP, the value the voice does not. Have you ever given any thought as to how someone with 5 one thousandths (.005) of your SP can serve as your arch nemesis? Lyndsay is no more evil than you are, but she is every bit as passionate and more so. She has not been unreasonable, even going so far as to offer to pay for the downvotes you received if you would use your SP in ways to further the blockchain. That doesn't seem like evil to me.
At the end of the day, the perceived long-term viability of the currency will make or break Steem. The actions you perpetrate here damage that perception to a large degree. To use a quote I heard somewhere, "Bears make money, bulls make money, but pigs get slaughtered." How do you think investors see your feeding frenzy in relation to the long-term viability of Steem?
Only one thing I know why people attack other people, jealous or else more than that somehow other feel they are perfect. I don't know but one thing I know these group of people is seeking for an attention.
I think there's this sort of weird attitude towards investors, as if it's a good idea to invest in Steem, and we want people to be buying it just for the purpose of buying it. But capitalizing Steem itself doesn't actually do anything; sure, it raises the price, and that can be helpful for those of us who build things. But unless they're actually doing something with that Steem, they're not really investors, they're just speculators.
in some sense everyone active on Steem is building a small business, and if their business model is making crappy posts and bidding them up massively, then naturally they're going to come in for some criticism for what they've chosen to invest in, just as, say, telephone spammers do in the offline world.
There really isn't any shortage of ability to invest in real projects here, if that's what someone wants. I'm not sure very many of them are great, from a capital perspective, but partly that's because very few of them are putting the effort in to be great because they perceive the available rewards of bootstrapping here to be greater than the available rewards from using outside capital.
Smart outside capital ought to see that and be interested in investigating the projects that aren't chasing them.
Well said Poly, well said... That's why it requires a helping hand, a guiding voice... not more toxicity.. Show them.. Hey brother, hey sister investor... Want to make a good ROI, help this platform grow... Check this out, tcheck this... that.... This is what this initiative is doing.. etc
But... right now its just pitchforking..
Well said! Glad to see more people thinking sensibly.
Steem is a duality indeed, more than just a social media platform or a currency it must look after both to remain healthy. The investor wants ROI, but the serious content creator wants/needs exposure; we need to find a way to accommodate both effectively. I don't have the answers either, but I will keep looking. Greetings!
Why don't just we support the group of good curator instead of paying to much attention to trending and hot page. It truly invite new investors.
How about we rename "Trending" to Promoted and replace it with the "Promoted"-Section.
Instead of Trending, we'll call it "Debated", "On The Steemians Mind", or something like that and not count payout or upvotes but count the depth and lengths of comments instead.
The more discussed a post is, the higher it's ranked there. That would be good, I presume.
Better than "Oh, I invest 1'000 STU to place it up there, but nobody actually cares."
Personally, I haven't looked at trending since ages.
@clayboyn was saying to me how awesome it would be (and I agree) to blend the promoted with the trending page, maybe every few posts, so that people have the choice to burn some sbds and get some eyes on their posts.
Its a win/win
bravo!
You know it's funny, every time I hear the word fungibility my eyes glaze over because even though I know what it means i'm not quite sure what it means in a given context. Why is that word important specifically in this context?
I also agree that it's easy to confuse the token with its market value and that distinction seems to stir things around in any economic discussion.
But at the end of the day, you're absolutely right that there needs to be buyers and sellers constantly trading even if just as an evaluation of the platform.
...and...
Down with toxicity!
hellz to the yeah!
I just would like to say that I know what that word means now.
#proud
#badass
hahahahah Serena... yes.. @tcpolymath loves this word too... actually he probably owns the account @fungibility
Well thats all fine... And i agree: dont be mean to those that dont hold the same values as you.
But.... The direction wer moving towards will eventually start looking like real world.
Kevinwong started talking about broken incentives and i have to agree with him.
Investors can have almost close to bot roi just by curating... What happens then is author/curator distribution. When you have bots the distribution is lacking greatly. Bots pocket most of the rewards that would go to authors and the delegators have just slightly higher roi by not actively participating.
Ofc those that come here empty pocket dont have any kind of starting point outside curie, ocd that could be here for a long time so its hard for them to invest in bots and participate in continued distribution.
That's where we're recruiting from.
It might be reasonable to have a goal that Steem stay a small, insular community with no large-scale social impact. I haven't heard anyone articulate it, but it would be interesting to talk about. Most people here, however, really want large-scale adoption, and there's no way to get that without adding people from external reality who will bring some of it with them.
Personally the political hate wars scare me a lot more than the capitalists.
Exactly. Wide scale adoption brings in real world people and what ever platform they are on some will do their best to satisfy their own greed.
There is no shift in mentality where ever you might put those people. Incentives are broken on steem which makes it worst.
I fear Steem will start looking like: "If you dont have money, we dont need you. "
Well right now it says conflicting messages:
Steem is currently investment toxic, we need that to change. I know this, I've been told this by people with deep pockets.
Important thing is which investors have you talked to. Steemit is a social media site, it has its values and core ideals set first by the whitepaper. If you have investors going against those values then of course they will get hate.
Yes people despise greed and fakeness.
I mean you say upvote minnows and be a nice friend but thats what the steem blockchain was supposed to be about... For those that have money to make money by using their stake to give money to those that dont have it based on quality, social value, friendship, etc...
People will allways revolt against greed and i cant blame them.
People weight thr benefit to to them of someone coming here and investing a bunch in bots againts their own values and principles.
If the benefit does not, and it almost never does outweight the value they put into their principles you get hate. Whats 10mil USD in investor money locked in bots mean for someone that earns 1USD per post... A slight increase in steem price?
More max upvotes for bot users to buy.
People and communities hold values and those that uphold those values are loved. Those who do not are not.. Thats the way it is.
Kpine and Vortac are investors as well. Do people give them hate? Maybe if they dont upvote them. But tgats social media and theres no changing that.
I never bother looking at the Trending, Hot, and Promoted pages. If it was up to me, the introductory page would feature New, Promoted, and Curated pages. New and Promoted be the same as what they are now except that Promoted would include all posts that are paying out because of big upvotes from the known paid upvote bots as well as the ones that are promoted through the other means.
The Curated page would feature hand curated posts. There are some pretty good curation groups that are active on Steemit now. Their regular posts are full of good content that would make a good impression on newcomers.
I like those ideas professor... a lot actually, a front end could be built around them.
Trending pages suck in general
https://steemit.com/teamaustralia/@itstime/another-trending-page-cancer-ecosystem
Maybe we just need to have a decentralized trending page , keeping with the motif of crypto and what not..
https://steemit.com/steempeak/@itstime/dapp-feature-idea-does-it-exist-already
Meanwhile , a short term fix
https://steemit.com/teamaustralia/@itstime/this-one-trick-will-make-steemit-hot-trending-section-less-sucky-in-2-5-secs
So much content on Steemit is boosted and paid for and bot voted. I think Steemit would work best without all the bots, it would mean more people actually read the content instead of just become part of bot trails etc.. I post original content consistently and don't use bots. If you're into art and music, come check me out.
Please don't up vote crap! It is hard to find good information to read or watch. Think of us noobs.
keep on keeping on Ethan... i sent some love your way.. don't stop
you are very correct @meno. It baffles me when I see people flag anyhow, especially innocent people. Some have left has a result of this unreasonable flagging.
Great stuff.
Hey there.. thanks for the support :)
I stopped paying any attention to the trending page. I often find people through different curation projects that help them get exposed. In the way I waste less time on posts I would not care about and more on some good reading(happy I found your blog, for example).
My feed is the only place I look for new followers, since those I follow usually either resteem other good authors or are just really good themselves.
But I gotta admit even before the "promotion" madness went loose, they weren't that much of a use anyways. I feel like it has never been working, even without the bots it was just instead the opinion of the whales that got the upvotes.
some people hold on to a MAGA type idea of..
Make the trending page great again... I ask... When was it great? When?
Exactly my point! They always seems to have been little to no use. I am not sure from what time people have been thinking otherwise but the year I have been here it was not. We still need to find some balance in all of this.
You bring up an excellent point @meno. I've often thought about this myself, lots of capitalist have probably paid good money to get into this platform strictly for the purposes of capitalizing off of their investment endeavors like bid bots and whatnot.
If these people can be chased off or if their customers are shamed and ridiculed for simply trying to get noticed in the new marketplace then all we successfully end up doing is get them to sell their stake because they can't handle the emotional toll of those who flame them for not being more giving.
I am all for charity. Charity is a fantastic and beautiful thing, but it must be a choice, if it's not a choice, it's not charity at all. It becomes something more sinister like you mentioned communist/socialist. The fact of the matter is Steemit is a community of buskers now and we're all competing with one another.
If you read/listen/watch and enjoy someone's content you should strongly consider rewarding them as frequently as possible in order to foster the growth and continuance of quality content. Yet, if we attack the profiteering type, we might be attacking the value of steem itself by creating an environment where capitalists are driven to dump their stake back to the market. If steem gets the rep of not being friendly to the investors, who will buy the dip?
I don't know, I come from a voluntaryist perspective. I won't even break out the flag tool for the picture of corn. Maybe mine is the right way, maybe it's not. We'd probably never have a Steemian population full of voluntaryists but if we did I wonder how that would effect the blockchain? If we'd have enough do gooders to make the platform a positive place. Or if everyone would just be in it for themselves.
I think even those ardent capitalists would find it in the best interest of the blockchain to reward quality content that they enjoy from time to time. Just because it's good for the blockchain, which translates financially to being good for the future value of steem. I also think that if both sides of these factions realized that if they can create a situation where they are maximizing their steem potential one for charity and one for self gain. Then a single flag by either party cancels itself out meriting no retaliation, because the very act of retaliating takes away from either charity or self gain.
Flagging is like some weird voodoo. You've got a twenty dollar bill in your pocket. You don't like this other guy so you steal a twenty from him burn it and then the 20 in your pocket magically vanishes. It just makes no sense to me. But, maybe in cases of self defense, I don't know.. It's like the three-fold-law that witches observe where whatever energy you put out there comes back at you three fold.
In the case of steem whatever flags you put out there instantly come back at you by draining your mana (steem power). That steem power drained is potential that is lost forever. It could have been used for something you wanted to reward, yourself or others, but it was wasted on a flag which hurt the other person as much as it hurt your own cause.
I recently wrote 'Reward Rape, Reward Pool Rape, Bidbots, and the NAP' you may want to consider giving it a read, I'd love to get your opinion on the matter. It really is difficult to see how this experiment will end or if it will continue on forever and how our actions as individual steemians play into it's long term sustainability.
That will probably don't happen to a new user that is just starting to understand the platform.
I've seen it way too many times... new account shows up, buys SBD or Steem, promotes, gets insulted, leaves.
Missed opportunity if you ask me.... we could have had a coaching moment, a friendly one too..
To the question in your title, my Magic 8-Ball says:
Hi! I'm a bot, and this answer was posted automatically. Check this post out for more information.
of course you don't, you failed
Lower prices are much more on the work platform
Thank you for the great information, dear
Good information
Thats all i can say.
What saddens me is how a whale can downvote minnows into oblivion
and then naturally the minnow will get driven away from steemit.
I also find it sad this platform currently does the opposite of rewarding good writers.
I have been downvoted by @berniesanders for criticizing his abusereports account. I find it really hard to get bidbots to upvote my posts because most bid bot owners try to combat spam by only upvoting posts by authors with a rep greater than 5.
Do you want to see how low I can make it?