Voting power and reward distribution are still incredibly unfair despite the recent changes. It absolutely needs to be weighted so that they're more progressive (like tax bands) or this platform doesn't really stand a chance of going mainstream.
Why and how is that true?
Having such inequality has led to the platform being dominated by a handful of power users.
You can always make a windows build, then fork the chain, and distribute the coin yourself, because you will hardly get anywhere if you think people are going to go along with anything that devalues their voting power.
On this site, everyone votes for the power users because because they know those posts are going to the top and it's a self-reinforcing spiral which just sees those power users accruing more and more wealth at the expense of everybody else.
People get a decent reward in curation first of all. The problem is that most of these power users EARNED their followers and their niches which gives them a clear advantage, and they deserve it, they worked or that after all. Some abuse those niches and crowds that follow them, but that doesn't say much of the community in general, as what others do by following the popular people doesn't harm the community.
The spiral is a spiral of ever better content and engagement.
Edit: Another thing I just thought of. Given that steem can be used to send private message using the memo functionality, why can't we send private messages to each other on steemit?
This was discussed before and it's a good question, I remember @l0k1 said there was a way to send private messages/encrypted through the memo. Maybe someone here know more or l0k1 shows up.
Edit 2: Why do I have to visit a different website in order to view my voting power? Why can't I view it on steemit?
I think they don't want you to worry abut those things.
Because the voting power and reward distribution concentrates voting power and reward to those who already have the most. A handful of people currently dominate the site and their power and rewards are only going to increase even faster compared to those with less power. This domination by power users destroyed digg and saw most of its users switch to reddit. Mainstream users will not accept that domination of this site by a handful of people and that domination is blatantly obvious for everyone to see.
Have you even tried following the guide to do a linux build? The guide is wrong. What chance do I have of creating a Windows build when the developers can't even create a working guide to build it on Linux?
If those at the top are not willing to give up their power, then the site is doomed to failure and they can circle-jerk amongst themselves about the price of steem being $0.001 USD.
Followers have nothing to do with this. People upvote the power users regardless of whether they're following them or not. The reason for this is blatantly obvious - to maximise curation rewards. These guys didn't need to earn their voting power, they simply used their wealth to allow them to mine and purchase steem. You don't even need to bother voting manually either as there are plenty of bots that you can setup to do that for you.
It's not that these power users are abusing the system, it's that the system is a flawed design which funnels even more money to those at the top than traditional financial investment systems. That's simply how the system was designed. Lots of people called it a blatant scam because of that and refuse to use the site.
No, it's one where those with the most voting power (from mining and purchasing cheap steem) get richer far more quickly than those with little voting power. You may think you're going to be a whale one day but not under the current rules you're not. When you've increased you're voting power by 100x, the whales will have increased theirs by 1000x making the gulf even greater. Relative to whales your voting power is actually decreasing.
Like I said, if this platform is to stand any chance of going mainstream, the rules have got to be changed to more evenly balance voting power.
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