Steem is one of the only cryptoassets I am holding for the long-term (not trading). That likely sets alarms off for many of you (as I promote Steemit in all my videos), so fair disclosure that there IS an economic incentive for me to boost the price of Steem so I get paid more for posting my content on Steemit. However, I am NOT being paid by Steemit or anyone else to make this video - I am doing it of my own accord.
First, this video explores some of the many flaws associated with Steem and its biggest application, Steemit. In summary, we discuss:
- The "instamine" by developers and relaunch of Steem blockchain at beginning so that developers received 80% of Steem supply in beginning for "development purposes"
- The issues associated with trending posts on Steemit - The lack of integrity in buying votes or whales colluding to upvote posts for reasons other than curation (e.g: a friend made the post)
- The fact that all of the money comes from investors, which makes payouts extremely volatile and, in a way, makes the business model seem Ponzi Scheme-like as money is created from 'thin air' (wish I explored this more - one of the downsides of not writing a script is not spending enough time on certain topics)
- Reward Pool Abuse
- Whether or not delegated Proof of Stake is corruptible (briefly, don't go into detail here)
- The quality of most posts (at least in trending) is rather poor. In my opinion, which I didn't share in the video, payments should be proportionate to quality and # of views which at this time, there is a massive disconnect which means tons of value is being destroyed.
Flaws I Didn't Discuss (Mostly due to constraints or forgetting while recording):
- Inadequate policing tools or incentives available for reducing the frequency of low quality submissions
- How complex Steemit feels to a new user
- How frustrating the account creation process can be (although this is being worked on)
After we go through the flaws, I discuss why I hold Steem for the long-term:
- It's the only cryptoasset with an application that sees real use, as verifiable through Alexa & SimilarWeb
- There is a culture in Steemit, as you can easily see with community discussions and "wars" over particular topics (e.g: Haejin, voting bots, etc.)
- It "feels" active - A lot of crypto projects "feel" dead due to low number of overall users. While trending may not be filled with high quality posts, it certainly has a lot of interaction which brings people back to the platform
- There is a team actively working on improving the platform and the witnesses are generally doing their best to make it a better place as well (a fact I forgot to mention in video)
- There are community members who are actively hard at work to improve the platform and Steem ecosystem (forgot to mention in video)
Overall, while Steem & the application Steemit have many concerns, it is my opinion that Steem is the closest to achieving its goal among almost all cryptoassets. I am hoping that the issues I have discussed will be addressable in the long-term and am willing to take the risk personally.
In the future, I might write an article that goes more in-depth on my opinions of Steem - this is more of an overview. Thanks for watching / reading.
I see you are not using any Steemit improvement addons like SteemPlus (Highly recommended)
You haven't covered much of how large the ecosystem actually is. There are many dozens of alternative front-ends like D.tube and utopian.io. If you have a quick look at https://steemprojects.com/ there are apparently 337 apps and tools for Steem. (sadly I noticed a few of very important one are not listed there)
I fully agree that a lot of the reward is being indirectly "Staked" (self-votes/bots) and that affect negatively the content discovery that makes Steem valuable. On the other hand there is also a whole lot of the reward that is shared away to contributions like code or good content and that create a ton of real economic activity.
Raw staking is frown upon by many whales and is often neutralized via flag attacks, so for now promotion bots are the simplest way to earn a passive income from Steem investments.
All voting bots have their own terms of service, for example @promobot try to solve the abuse problem by never turning a profit to the vote purchasers.
While the cost paid might be equal to the value of the received votes payouts, since the money it is at risk of getting flagged during the 7 days leading to payout and half of it is being paid out as vested Steem, (SteemPower requiring 13 week cool-down) the customers have to promote content that is likely to earn them more than they risked on promotion.
My opinion is that as it become simpler and simpler for normal people to access these promotion services the competition will move from bidding skills/gambling toward creating extra value from the earned exposure on your content. The quality of the front-page will then increase along with demand for landing on it. (Trust me, very smart peoples are working towards that)
I believe Steem can easily scale as it relate to achieving world-class stake based content discovery but Steem's technology cannot currently scale as a way for billions of people to interact with their close friend like they do on Facebook, almost none of that is transactional and rarely benefit from being on a censorship resistant Blockchain.
I see Steem as a very active reactor of economic activity with a social component that makes it's future applications at a high risk of going viral and attracting a lot of external interest.
Steem is the blockchain that taps the most into the many various skills of people that are not crypto geeks.
Considering the many possible outcomes from rewarding these contributors via proof of brain, while it's users are operating within a very smooth and convenient value transfer system that's using recognizable account names and free transactions, I believe Steem is somewhat backed by real world value creation and is thus a good hedge to Bitcoin during a bear market.
I could speak a lot about the upcoming Steem core development that will greatly improve the building of various views on content and makes it easy to build subject based sub-communities like Sub-reddits but that'd be worthy of a full post, so I'll just drop this here : https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/update-communities-hivemind
Shameless plug; Delegating SteemPower to @promobot will automatically set you up to receiving 100% of your share of what @promobot receives. For more information we can contacted here : https://discord.gg/reZ84FC
Transisto,
I have looked at that site a few times (which is reason for my 5th point on there on benefits side), but at this point it is predominantly Steemit in terms of usage (or depends on Steemit), although naturally one hopes that improves over time. I still don't know how I feel about vote bots - even "good" ones that only vote for content deemed 'worthy.' In my opinion, organic growth is far more valuable than artificial for both Steem and the content creators in the long-term: That is evident in most other existing social media sites (yes you can pay for exposure, but it is nowhere near as effective).
You'll note that because my growth has been relatively organic on Steem (you can never be entirely), the quality of comments on my posts has exceeded that of most posts (at least in my opinion). This is part of why organic growth is so superior - it also builds a more organic community (for which I am grateful comment, even if I am not always the best at responding). There are a few other regulars on here that have built that type of audience as well (which isn't entirely self-serving, sub4sub type deal), which I think is the right "image" for the site.
I hope over time, applications built on Steem (but particularly Steemit) can develop to a point where high quality content (which I have a pretty high bar for that - less than 5 of my videos reach the minimum for that in my opinion) is highlighted above all else and discussion is far healthier than it is on most other competing platforms.
I looked at the Hivemind post earlier this week - it is exciting. Again, my hope over the long-term is that because there is so much passion in this community, that will help address some of the serious concerns and issues the platform currently has. The alternative is it dies / fades to obscurity, which I've already accepted as a possibility (admittedly, that's how I feel about EVERY crypto-related project). We'll see how it unfolds in the long-term. Thank you for the post and support as always.
The problem with that too much idealistic thinking of high quality content is you would need 100s of dolphin accounts and have proper value flow if you want people to not use promotion services. Organic growth is a lie. Do you think Coca-Cola or McDonalds became huge because organic growth? I give you a hint... Capital... Cash Flow... Value needs to Flow...
agreed, steem has had a meaningful journey and is absolutely a great product primed for a big breakout.
Proof-of-brain which I see is also mentioned on the Utopian website, is as I had explained in 2016 a very corrupt and flawed design that can never be fixed because the problem is not in the code but in the vested interests structure that requires the various non-objective aspects of Steem that enable the perpetrators to hoodwink everyone here.
Also the term proof-of-brain is by implication conflating the consortium DPoS blockchain design with the algorithm employed for minting rewards out-of-thin-air. Steem has delegated proof-of-stake consensus, not proof-of-brain. It’s technobabble employed for embellishment marketing to put lipstick on a pig, i.e. it is dishonest marketing babble that confuses n00b users and makes them excited to support something which is actually highly flawed.
I am wondering how large is it?
I perused many of them and they seem not that compelling. Utopian will not be useful until the upvote buttons can be embedded into the Github Issues threads and such so more eyeballs can vote. Ditto most everything else there doesn’t really have am effective adoption model. I don’t think Steem has enough adoption to drive Dtube, but I might be mistaken. Video and music is very problematic because of copyrighted material that can be embedded (such as a jingle tune in the middle of the video which was sampled from some copyrighted audio). Doesn’t seem like a low hanging fruit use case to chase, at least not until ledger servers are not run by elected witnesses that can be targeted by the authorities for hosting copyrighted content. Yet another one of the reasons that I think consortium blockchains are not sustainable.
I agree with @cryptovestor that organic growth is what builds community and stickiness. And I amplify his skepticism further more towards the cynical w.r.t. to your non-sober embellishment and hyperbole. Lots of very smart people have been thinking about this and realized the voting from a collective pool can never work. It is a fundamentally insolubly flawed game theory structure.
OTOH, I recognize that @cryptovestor is correct in making the point that Steem is the only crypto project with a significant and enthusiast community (but I don’t how large?). One thing I am concerned about is if Steem fails and all these enthusiast people become jaded and disillusioned. I hope we can do something so they will not leave crypto forever if Steem flames out.
Not if new users can’t signup.
Disclaimer: I have a vested interest in competing against Steem with the project I am working on.
I hope the communities will eventually replace tags by usability or make a nice combo with it. Maybe the trending page problem solves itself.
I hope so too, and in the meantime, I don't ever look at the trending page. Everyone complains about it, but why not just make it irrelevant by not using it?
Teach people to engage on here using other ways of navigation, which for me has been search and to some extent tags then hot. (I'm not entirely sure how hot is chosen, but it's better content than trending).
i think your commentary here is remarkably intelligent and insightful. i think you ought to be posting words/ideas thoughts like these as posts of your own! ~thank you!
You really tore the information apart.
For many of us joining the band not long ago, your kind of posts broadens our horizon.
My opinion is that as it become simpler and simpler for normal people to access these promotion services the competition will move from bidding skills/gambling toward creating extra value from the earned exposure on your content. The quality of the front-page will then increase along with demand for landing on it. (Trust me, very smart peoples are working towards that)
well said, it just needs to play it's course.
Exactly. Then when it's all loss ROI on bidding then only the real players can stay involved.
GREATE. THANKS FOR YOUR INFO
Thanks for this brutally honest analysis of STEEM. Keep 'em coming!!
Just to clarify, the trending page has always been horrendous. Before HF18, when there was a quadratic rshares distribution, large stakeholders (aka "whales") would dominate trending. Now, promotion bots dominate.
So we just switched from one kind of horrendous content to another. I would argue that it's better now because there are more factors that go into the arrangement of trending than it would have been if we had 30 or so large stakeholders in charge of it.
It's an old discussion about influence caps. I think it's improving, but it also has a lot of room to improve.
In terms of dealing with @haejin types, remember that the reward pool is a fixed number. If one @haejin gets $1,000 a day, then another one comes along because they think it's a great idea he gets a large stakeholder to promote him (assuming the stakeholder is in the same league, which is a big if), suddenly they both have to share the same reward pool, and might only get $500 each. Add another, and another. They have to share the same fixed number.
All this to say, the "problem" is self-correcting as popularity increases (assuming everything else like the market price of STEEM stays the same).
Do you buy all your clothes from the one-size-fits-all, unisex, bluejeans only section with your shoelaces tied to those of the other patrons? I hope the technical relevance of this point doesn’t escape you.
Why don’t you spell it out for me.
If every user can see a different ranking because of decentralized curation, then mathematically the pollution of rankings by manipulators becomes impotent and relevance of rankings for users is retained. The original algorithm I offered probably was undecidable, but I think I’ve since figured out how to do it. This would also ameliorate this bullshit of whales downvoting (and thus censoring) content for all viewers, as happened to me (at the hands of whale @chryspano) when I wrote a blog that was critical of EOS and consortium blockchains.
P.S. Side-effect is that I can’t even make an archive of the comments on that page by using
archive.isorarchive.orgbecause Steemit doesn’t display the comments on censored posts until theViewbutton is clicked (thatViewbutton only appears for blogs which have been censored by whales). AndBusy.orgdoesn’t display the comments until the page is scrolled down. I was banned fromBitcointalk.organd Quora because of my controversial and frank posting choices. That is why decentralized curation is very important to me and I will make sure it is implemented in a replacement for Steem soon. I won’t even publish my most politically incorrect blogs to Medium for fear of being banned, such as the recent blog which assimilated all the incontrovertible proof that 9/11 and other false-flags are being perpetrated by the secret intelligence agencies of the DEEP STATE.Removing incentive is not censorship.
Causing content to be
rankeddisappear according to one whale’s preferences doesn’t match the preferences of all the readers the content has been hidden from. The entire point is to match the preferences of users based on the expression of their past voting patterns, so that votes from like-minded people impact the rankings for like-minded people.Fool yourself with false power if you wish. No incentive was removed. It only increased the incentive. Observe.
The market will move to what provides the most relevant and organic matching of preferences. Social networking is about diversity, not overlords. Their days are numbered.
Like I said, it would save time if you'd just bullet point all the things you know so that I can then believe those things without having to think. Then we won't have that pesky back-and-forth where you make your random assertions that in no way relate to anything I've previously said.
Hi @inertia!, I was wondering if the "problem" is self-correcting but only if the whole reward pool is being used?. In your example above you say assuming the price of steem stays the same. I am trying to figure out how 1000 on rewards can turn out to be 500 if the price stays the same, thanks :)
Good coverage of what happen to Steem in very early days, at least from they others people point of view. I think it would be good to actually mention that it was (in my opinion) thought through, because they didn't want to or they can't do an ICO in a USA:
This is article wrote by Dan Larimer a month before Steem was launched:
This is the reason why @dan created EOS :)
You mentioned that all the value comes from investors. That is not strictly true. The money comes from new currency supply via inflation. So that means everyone in the community pays via a slight decrease in purchasing power.
Also if you visit the 'Promoted' section you'll find people who have paid Steem Dollars to promote their posts (click on their rewards amount to see how much they paid to boost their post):
https://steemit.com/promoted/
That currency is burned and taken out of supply. This advertising feature is the key to the ecosystem and is being grossly neglected by the developers IMO.
Full details at: https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemitblog/introducing-promoted-content
I think it's accurate to say that the money originates from the deployment of capital (investors) and is distributed by inflation.
I agree, except for Promoted.
What a good read about promoted tab.
*..The more people that read, vote, and follow users who promote their content the more people will be willing to spend to promote content. The more people spend, then more Steem grows in value. In other words, simply visiting the promoted content page and reading promoted articles helps boost capital flowing into the platform...
OFC when you know your content doesn't worth to be on trending or such, you'll go for bots.
Same as fiat basically.
To add to your point, steemit wouldn't need investors if the money stayed in the ecosystem which highlighs the importance of having commerce integrated within our social profils.
I would not have any sense of being like that, I agree with you @peaceandlove
Social Commerce-Steemit
@peaceandlove I concur it that this eco-system has ability to sustain without investors due to integration. but to add again, its commerce tool i.e bots will still have an edge on real user which will severly disturbs its balance in steemit and will affect its popularity drastically. In generic, yes it dont need investors but counting factors, it does need it.
Recently on a platform bots reign. People pay money to promote their low-quality posts. And thus, the interest in the platform disappears from those who are ready to work honestly, to do interesting and kachestvennye work. But now the voices of the bots have overshadowed all other posts. It is very difficult to compete with those who come here to milk the system without making a significant contribution. Profit is quickly withdrawn, cashed out, and therefore the rate is unstable.
Yes
I'm very interested in your publication @marketingmonk and it gives me a little light to understand some things about the behavior of the platform
Actually I would argue that the value does come from investors. If you wish to sell the STEEM/SBD you have earned here then they are the ones who will be buying it from you. Without willing buyers the tokens no longer have value.
Re: Ninja Mine
Would your rather have a group of people with vision and competence to deliver have the early stake, or some random shitcoin miner on bitcointalk?
It seems like having a highly motivated party (Steemit) with a long term stake yielded a better outcome.
Steem simply rocks! Its platform is so unique and so many cryptonians were jumping in the steemit wagon 😊
You are 100% right
Upvoted and followed! Love your positive outlook!
Just do a premine in that case - Why pretend you're not premined (as they advertised), yet realistically your distribution has the exact same concerns as a premine? The only reason I can think of is that there is a negative connotation with premines, so might as well do a stealth mine which has the exact same effect (skewed distribution towards founders), but less PR concerns. The technical semantics they went for were just a lame tactic overall and even though they were transparent about how much they had, it was still handled poorly (in my opinion).
It's not clear to me that an organized premine doesn't have the same legal liability than an ICO that's keeping a % of the supply for itself. Unfortunately setting up a skewed start risk giving too much stakes to many other early people along the main originators of the project (steemit), which is what I believe happened. The good thing is that as time goes and these people cash out the influence of these people diminishes.
I think the oligarchy control never diminishes. While they’re dumping, the game theory I warned about in 2016 says they should also be using their alleged 8000 daily sockpuppet signups (awarding themselves presumably 120,000 SP daily) to upvote themselves and take a disproportionate share of the rewards and thus replenishing or even increasing their share of the token supply over time. It’s the perpetual dump for as long as the users are hoodwinked to go along with it and enough new greater fools are willing to buy STEEM tokens and power-up (which is probably another reason for making faucet sign-ups so difficult).
What amazes me is how many people would hope and assume anything other than the outcome I predicted and which is happening. Humans are so trusting of the power vacuums that rape them every time over and over throughout human history.
I also think the securities problem may (not certainly) also whack Steem upside the head with exchange delistings.
It was for this exact reason that intelligent individuals steered well clear of steemit and rightfully talked mad shit on it in places like bitcointalk, and considering how much dumping went on at the very start and how there hasn't been a steem boom cycle independent of other factors that buoyed other coins and led to steem/sbd being convenient pump and dump tools on upbit they were mostly not wrong. Good investors question projects that have dev shares much, much less than what steem had, and it has hurt the project and its investment potential from the very start.
Yes, and instead of acknowledging and attempting to fix these investor concerns and criticisms, STINC simply announced that they would go forward with their “multi-year divestment plan” - A.K.A., “long-term dump.”
Not only are they doing that, but they have also delegated large amounts of stake to their favored people and projects from this ninja-mined sum, which further dilutes investors’ stake-weight on the platform.
So would-be investors are taking on more risk (from planned multi-year dumping of a large percentage stakeholder) and getting less reward (in the form of lower returns when putting their stake to use). And we wonder why STEEM can’t sustain any price rises and the platform doesn’t attract many people other than poor, talentless bums and scammers.
But despite all of that, Dan actually created a phenomenal blockchain that can possibly survive the ninja-mine and the continued incompetence of his former colleagues. Possibly.
Amen to that rant!
LOL
You know, I feel like a poor, talentless bum.
At least I'm not a scammer ;)
The creators worked hard and came up with something not only amazing but a paradigm shift - which is all the harder. I mean look how hard it is for general users to get a handle on this new paradigm. To be the ones that came up with it - that's in the vein of Einstein - in terms of the creative capacity required.
They also took a lot of risk in terms of time investment.
And because of that I don't have a problem with them holding so much from a premine style activity. What's more important is the long term viability.
Maybe functionally identical, but not exactly the same. It was more like, “If you understand this, or at least trust that there’s something unique in this code base, get on board.”
That’s how they thought they presented it. The optics seemed good at the time. But when people look back at it, they saw something else.
I have invested in the future of steam and have primarily been using it as a source of information, as opposed to youtube (when possible).
I do find it strange how always the same people get a large number of votes or at least rewards irrelevant of the quality of the uploaders work or the posts being commented on.
With time I am sure this will be addressed but in the interim I certainly intend on keep using the Steemit platform. In fact in July I am moving for 6 months to South Korea and intend on posting my first ever photo blog here.
I really appreciate your thoughts on steem and the way you deliver the message, Thanks
I agree with your analysis, both the good and the bad, the challenges facing us all, and the prospects for a positive future - further bolstered by the upvotes and quality comments received by this very post!
Thanks for your overview. I look forward to your in depth analysis. I always enjoy hearing why others invested in Steem. Real use was a big reason why I invested as well. I'm surprised you didn't mention SMT's at all.
Well said my friend. It's too bad that good content creators are discouraged to post good quality content because they don't even get a few cents worth of upvotes, wile someone gets 10$ upvote just by posting the picture of a flower.
Fair criticism, the problems are very well covered. Can't argue with that.
But the potential of steem was completely ignored in this video. Maybe it's because you like to judge a product on what it delivers TODAY.
That's fair and maybe that is how investors should think, but I like to imagine what steem can become and invest for the end vision.
The amazing feature on steem is the paid upvote. That is what fundamentally differentiate this product from everything else. It's a powerful tool and steemit.com was a good proof of concept. Yes it's not perfect and has problems as you highlighted, but it prooves that it kinda works.
Now what's important is the following: Smart Media Tokens will provide this tool (paid upvote) to everyone soon (hopefully 2018). Imagine countless entrepreneurs trying to innovate, creating websites and phone apps with a paid upvote. The ecosystem will keep growing, and the use-cases for the paid upvote will improve.
Then one day comes a student in his dorm and creates the new facebook with an SMT. Steem just needs ONE homerun. Just one. If any website using SMTs reaches the popularity of twitter or reddit, we will have massive money in steem. And the price will grow more than a hundredfold from where it is now. Just compare the market cap to those of facebook, google, snapchat and others.
I invest in steem because I believe that this technology is very empowering, and I bet on the fact that someone will hit a homerun using it.
I could compare steem to other cryptos point by point and show easily how it is far better. I could also take the problems you mentioned and argue that increased popularity and growth will naturally solve them. But I don't want to get into an argument and just want the focus of this comment to be on the fact that ONE good Smart Media Token is all we need.
It is. But the problem is that rewarding tokens by minting from the collective money supply has a game theory which means it is a “winner-takes-all” eventual outcome. That is what we see going on now with the 8000 signups per day probably being sockpuppets of the cartel that controls Steem.
This is a structural problem that can’t be fixed. That cartel will never willingly give up its cash cow. It will continue to siphon off as much Bitcoin value as it can from this.
I agree with your idealism. And there will come a better design and project which meets the idealism you have. But it will not be Steem nor EOS, because these groups are as corrupt as can be.
I don't agree because they have no incentive to be corrupt. The money lies into taking this product as far as it can go. we can never be 100% sure, but I believe they are clever enough to see this and I trust them because they are incentivized to behave.
The "winner-takes-all" outcome is also not a problem for me because the winner is the best content creator. People don't sign up to social media to make money. I don't care about curation rewards. But I also don't want a centralized company to make money out of my attention, and above all I hate adds. This is the value proposition that steem offers today.
Thanks for making this video and offering your opinion. I was just discussing some of these issues today with @friendly-fenix and @bycoleman of @transparencybot. I posted last month about some answers to the price of Steem here— for newbies. Also the importance of commerce as @peaceandlove pointed out below. Although the posts are past payout, I'm very interested in your take on what I've written there. I'm deeply fascinated by this subject and how passionate people feel about it.
That aside— I agree what's been done here is magnificent. If it was done on purpose or by accident, intended or unintended; this is a worthwhile experiment in action. I'm also interested in seeing what the other platforms following suit will be doing including EOS, Sola, and others. I have a running list of 40+ blockchain social projects being developed and some are really interesting. I wonder how they might do things differently than Steem has. As someone else just stated below, it's a paradigm shift.
Something key here I believe is Steem, like it or not, is no longer solely a blogging platform. It's now transforming into a small internet of its own. Where Facebook is a single interface with its own database (which is somewhat what Steemit was at one point— and more centralized than let on); Steem blockchain is now becoming the network over which many various and different types of apps and interfaces are building their platform on top of— some with their own interface level database + blockchain. Most owning their own company and not Steemit Inc., and having not only different terms but different laws, rules, and technology. So I'm of the stance that the biggest changes that need to occur is in how we think about things— for the sake of your video Steem and Steemit are the same, but rapidly that is changing.
For instance, what if Dtube gets a license (like Youtube) to legally use copyright music but Joe Regular doesn't have said license on Steemit: will anti-plagiarism crusaders check to see if the music was posted by a dtuber before downvoting it to hell?
What if new platforms involve multiple coins, SMTs, and tokens in one?
Psychology suggests that losers feel as entitled as winners — because it's a quality of the competitive and comparative mindset. However benevolent seeming control, co-dependence, enabling, and help is: it's still over-reaching when unsolicited. Unions usually form against large capitalist monopolies to balance things out for the little guy (until the little guy becomes the big guy— then they act the same way.) I put a spotlight on the fact that many of the smaller actions taking place to fix Steem/Steemit are the same actions using to corrupt it- simply dressed better, and holding a cross of some kind.
How do we calculate for well intended ignorance?
Power does not corrupt. Power simply empowers, the incorrupt and already corrupt equally. Alas, the human condition is more the latter than the former.
Most of the flaws here are human flaws. There's no fork for that.
Power vacuums demand the most ruthless corruption. Voting (from a collective pool or for a collective set of leaders) is a power vacuum. Click the link if you wish to dig deeper.
ty these are interesting thoughts thank you:)
Thank you for reading it, I'm not sure who else will lol
I am reading. Not only that I also saw you over in another comment section earlier today.
I will go read your older posts as well. Being new here I am reading everything I can on the subject. Helps a lot in deciding how much or even if I want to buy some SP.
I am finding the comment section to be the best place to learn on Steemit. It is great to see a range of viewpoints in one handy spot. This line is priceless.
Fascinating idea.
That should be an article itself.
Well done
The whole point of management is to develop protocols that preclude corruption, or it's bad management.
Code is law, and can preclude much of the corruption extant on Steemit. Forks can handle what flags can't, IMHO.
.
I just delegated 4000 SP @promobot
https://discord.gg/reZ84FC
Another item that is apparent from the success of the underlyibg STEEM blockchain is the flexibility it provides for other applications. Steemit is definitely the main gateway and with the upcoming hives update, it will become a more sirect competitor with Reddit and attens to some voting/trending issues you mention. However, many other platforms are also being built to be direct competitors to other well known platform. For example, Zappl is like Twitter and Dtube/Dlive are like YouTube. There are others coming as well. This has not brought issues of scaling yet as per Blocktivity, STEEM continues to be the best in its class with transactions and bandwidth. Lastly, the coming start of SMTs could also bring the potential of more mainstream content providers as they look to monetize their content. The potential is definitely there given the ecosystem the blockchain is supporting.
Great video! People are very loyal to this platform and there have definitely been many arguments that I have seen, too. I love that people form friendships here and socialize. I wish more people would contribute quality posts AND quality comments because many comments are very short and not contributing to the conversation. I don't use the bots and don't plan on using them because I feel like it's cheating. I am trusting that if I put out good content and share good thoughts that I will be successful. I like the premise behind Steem and I feel that it could be successful in the long term, as well. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts!
Ivy
I tend to agree with you for the most part. Good work, Thank you
Thanks for the perspective. STEEM has its issues for sure, but first movers advantage as well as network effect is in place with STEEM. Excited to see how the rest of the year goes. Thanks for the share!
STEEM has such a bright future and can change the world!!
In the end, the crypto assets that will survive and foster value are the ones with the most users. Steemit does not seem to have an issue here, especially as the #deletefacebook trend gains traction.
But, it really becomes a question of Steemit being able to "curate" (without censorship) and provide opportunity for quality content to be found amongst the sea of disinformation and Ponzi-like trending pages and bots. Will Steemit be able to maintain user growth and maintain its value of providing community and unbiased (but high-quality) information? It is all up to the consensus within the community to decide; it's a free-market system that is currently not large enough to weed out all of the nonsense that makes social media anything but social.
Clearly, the fact that I am blogging here shows you where I stand, but it's up to the markets to decide! Cheers
I don't necessarily think #deletefacebook helps Steemit. Its uses are very different . I don't don't see people here following what their friends are up to or posting what they just ate just like I don't see that on Reddit either. Actually in my opinion if Steemit is going to take users from some place is from Reddit or other internet forums.
Delete facebook is against the use of users' data, on steemit no data is protected or private and there should be no reasonable assumption of any privacy whatsoever, so you are correct in saying that steemit will not benefit from any influx of privacy-minded individuals.
The free availability of the data that is on the blockchain is a blow to the heart and soul of surveillance companies.
All data will exist. When it's kept from the public, it becomes commoditized. Being free means it's ours--each of us can access our own data--as much as everyone's. Can't be used for blackmail, or various other nefarious purposes.
I'm a strong advocate for the people data is generated by being the owners of the data. A good first step towards that is making it available to us. Hopefully, the rest will follow.
Privacy, IMHO, is pretty much a thing of the past. Technology won't allow it. Not much we can do about that except not generate data. That's mostly not practical. Fakebook was just after our medical records. They have data on non-Fakebook users.
Steem won't do that. For these reasons Steemit is vastly superior to all other social media platforms regarding privacy I am aware of.
The #deletefacebook trend I alluded to is merely the beginning of a much larger trend. One where people begin to doubt being online in any sort of capacity because of cybersecurity risks and being data-mined for faceless corporations. So in this sense, Steemit absolutely does benefit as the consumer makes a conscious decision to decide where he/she spends his/her online time and efforts.
Does Steemit capture this entire market? Of course not, but to suggest it will be a beneficiary of this trend is rational in my mind.
I definitely used the exact same logic as you when I decided to invest in Steem. And I honestly have the same issues as you do, even though I really don't care if people decide to use bots or not. It's more so the fact that people act like vultures on this site. But the fact that this crypto actually has a unique and functional application, in a space where most projects are just white paper, is what convinced me to invest.
Interesting to hear about the history of Steem. Steem is also one of my favourite crypto investments. I don't upvote blog posts that buy upvotes. I'd much rather support minnows.
I don't see any ads on Steemit. Long term, where is the money going to come from to pay for all the votes etc?
Every good crypto coin should be hold for long term and normal ups and down should not worry investors who are playing ling
You have some very good points here, i also think that steem is one of the best coins to invest on
Don't you think that many #steem users are moving to the new #steem upgrated version #eos ?
I am going to resteem this to my 1829 followers because this appears to be an objective summary and then discussion in the comments of the serious flaws and remaining advantages of Steem. This is well done and appreciated.
I want to add my recent comments about the flaws which argues against your point that the corruption has improved. And how I think this could possibly (although perhaps not) play out in terms of Steem being classified as a security and thus being aggressively targeted for delisting by governments.
Also I may have some comments to add under @transisto’s hyperbole comment.
Thanks for the effort. Btw, I really agree with you that having community and inertia is a big factor. Corbett Report discusses these positive factors:
https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1354-dan-dicks-on-steemit-dtube-and-the-alt-media/
But can we measure the community since apparently much of the activity may be faked sockpuppet accounts of STINC or whom ever they’re allowing to create so many sockpuppet accounts? I was looking for some objective measures and I have not seen any blogs trying to distill fake activity from bona fide community. I am not knowledgeable whether Alexa rankings can’t be fabricated employing botnets.
I see 904 upvotes for this blog. I would think that this blog would garnish the interest of a fairly significant cross-section of Steemians. So I wonder if there are really more than 10,000 serious users of Steem? That might imply 100,000 active bona fide usership including all the most casual users.
40% of my crypto portfolio is steem, bought it when it was trading around $5, and since then I have added on every dip.
I see great potential and am holding it for long term, but only if the problems stated above and a few more are sorted out by the community.
I see real life use of steemit and am bullish, if we can together solve the problems.
People always find ways to abuse the system. If you can't beat em join em? I don't want to but I feel like I have to if I want success
Define success.
Seems like the bots are generally reviled, and viewed as corrupting Steemit. Not universally, but widely.
I don't view that as a success story.
Do you?
I am doing the same, but some of the flaws you bring up do raise concern as an investor. I feel as though all of the issues since the hard fork are just a never-ending circle that leads right back to the beginning where we started.
I hope that this platform is around for quite some time because I am powering up as much as possible for years to come, but I just don't know if some of these things are even addressable. Steemit is all about community, yet we see a complete and utter disconnect in regards to community curation... I hope this changes in the near future-- for now, we STEEM on, my friend !
Code is infinitely mutable, and Steem and Steemit are made of code. No software problem is insoluble.
Well, let's hope these software problems are fixed sooner than later then. Steemit has a lot of potential, but is currently being hindered by a number of code issues... if i knew how to code effectively, I would attempt to solve some of these problems, but I have absolutely no idea how to code.
The problems are not mostly due to code and thus not solvable by fixing the code. The problems are structural vested interests and in the intentional game theory of the design to maintain those vested interests. Thus I confidently predict as I correctly did in 2016, that it will only get worse.
BTW-resteemed to spread the word -- keep up the solid work here on steemit @cryptovestor
As a student who develops bots for Steemit I deeply believe in the long term value of Steem. However, Steemit may be doomed to fail...
We haven't seen much development on Steemit in the last months and the content quality in Hot or Trending is at an all time low. Most social media sites have a "recommended" page that accurately suggests good content.
But we do not have any other way of finding new content besides Hot or Trending. A lot of top ranking witnesses run their own bid based voting bots and therefore I think we can agree that these bots won't disappear over night....
The only other option to find good content is to develop a "recommended" page and I'm almost certain that that will happen. With better content this new site will quickly replace Steemit especially for new users who are just here for reading good content and not for earning money.
Please point out any flaws in my theory!
I agree with you that it needs a way better system of recommendation and a way for us to search for content. What you said that you create bots, I'm intrigued, in what schools did you go and are still going and where did you learn to, I expect, code?
I'm in the 11th class of a regular high school in Germany and I have learned coding myself.
That is great, the educaton system in my coutry is a bit diferent with the classes. Im 16 and im going to 2 gradeof gymanzium(non specialized high school). Were you using some tutorials on Youytube or online coures?
I watched a few tutorials but I learned the most by trail and error just coding and the searching for the solution on stack overflow :D Although I have never bought a tutorial I'm currently doing a 5 months computer science learning guide by Siraj Raval:
I hope to perfect my abilities and broaden my skill set.
Thank and good luck!!!
We have a great way to let the community bring the great quality to the top at the @promo-steem account using our @steem-ambassador programme. This is model is currently being applied to posts that promote steem.but there is no reason we could not apply this model to multiple other movements. Essentially part of the role of the Steem Ambassadors is as oracles who manually check the highest quality promo work for the steem blockchain
Agreed @starkerz ! This model of the @steem-ambassador can be applied for other things in the blockchain! Everytime focused on adding value to the blockchain!
Here is an idea I came up with about an hour ago to unify the campaign for delegation on all promoter posts. Your thoughts on this are greatly appreciated.
Idea for the Promo-Steem Website - Lets have a Page Explaining How to Delegate to @Steem-Ambassador and Reasons - with the Markdown already done - For Promoters to copy and paste at the end of Posts
What content reaches the top shouldn't be controlled by the minority of large bots / stakeholders no matter what program they run!
Just a fronted. Busy.org is better. Once it has market, Im using it all the time.
yeah, busy has some really unique features like the notifications
I think what is foreseeable is people suggesting the same things implemented by sites like Facebook. And in the end, it will be Facebook if such feelings take over a constitutional view of the concept. Look at groups, algorithm suggestions, fair socialistic distribution, etc- people want Facebook with dividends.
That said, why not just buy stock in Facebook?
because Facebook would never pay you money for posting...
I don't think that's a bad thing because Facebook has many superior features and every day users won't switch until we can offer the same level of comfort.
However, Facebook and all other social media sites were flawed from the beginning! They are designed to keep you on their site because they earn their money through advertisements or data. Steem is designed differently.
exc review man! - 100% upvote
https://steemit.com/steemit/@felipesuarez/april-2018-honest-review-steemit-steem-and-the-platform-bots-suck
I sometimes ask myself what will happen to of steemit when another (more balanced and friendlier to new users) descentralized crypto social network comes along. Then I remember that in each commercial niche there is always space for 3 types of companies: the first one(the creator of the tech), the most advanced one(who perfected it the most), and the most popular one. If you don´t believe me, just look what happened to web browsers(internet explorer vs firefox vs chrome), or operating systems(windows vs linux vs macOS).
When I realize that, I can safely assume that even if another descentralized crypto social network surpasses it, steemit will still be around for a long time....
Wow, so much information here - make sense. I am new here at Steemit, but I am going to buy more Steem on Binance while it is still cheap. I upvote & resteem too. The comments from others are also helpful. Just wondering whether I should send all my steem to steemit or just keep it at Binance . Any advice from anyone is much appreciated. Thanks
I would agree with you 100% on the sketchy history of Steemit and there are definitely things that need to be fixed such as the way bots and whales game the platform. However you rightly point out that it is one of the few crypto platforms that has a viable use case and whose future growth will down to user uptake rather than just speculation. Finally the adapocalypse means that many content creators are migrating towards steemit from other platforms
Thank you for your steem analysis. It is a larger ecosystem than most of us realize for certain.
What? You are not holding fightclubcoin long term as well???
Shhhhh..........remember we can't talk about it.
for me to buy Steem is the best investment that exists at this time since Steemit lasts for a long time and hopefully steemit stays forever ... in the trend you are absolutely right because I am already tired of always seeing the same face in the trend and always talking about it, it would be good to find a large group of curators and choose two or three publications per day that are quality and put it in a trend with quality "minnow".
Brutally honest and fair. There are a lot of changes coming and hopefully these problems will be solved as further decentralization is created (Smart Media Tokens and Community feature)
Finally! A steem plug from @crytoinvestor 🤑
Great video, thank you for presenting this to us. Very informative and helpful to my decision process in moving forward.
We must all realize that not everyone is on Steemit (or other UI that use STEEM) for money, many if not most are.
We need to weigh up the options we have to keep STEEM/SBD as a liquid asset that can be exchanged into for example Bitcoin or to lock it up as SP (for 13weeks).
Everyone's reasons or even understanding of why to do that will be different.
Everyonne's level of understanding is different, and I believe it is purposefully made difficult to understand to encourage high levels of locked up STEEM (SteemPower)
Many don't understand that it will take 13 weeks to get your STEEM back from Steem Power (SP).
Delegation is another big issue that many takes sides about. Should we even be able to Delegate STEEM Power (SP)?
Bots are another issue that is very touchy topic here, many hate them, many use them...and they are mostly operated by Whales (invested users who have put HUGE money into STEEM, either by mining when Steemit was first released or by using other means to buy STEEM early in it's release).
I'm not 100 percent in on Steemit but I do appreciate having the opportunity to be part of this newish experiment in Social Media, and the chance to make some STEEM/SBD that can if I want to exchange into other tokens such as BTC as an example thereby reducing my exposure to risk in only holding the STEEM/SBD (essentially free money) I can earn.
So thank you to Steemit Inc., and the developers behind the STEEM Blockchain.
Thank you for a Social Media platform that hasn't got (too many) ads yet...there are still a lot of 'referral links' which are kind of ads but not really intrusive.
Thank you for the potentiality to get paid for our content.
Very nice review
Some more long term reasons to invest:
I'm glad you still choose to support this platform even though there are so many problems. Oh wait, there is no competition, just like you said... lol :)
However, when competition does eventually arrive I think this will be good for everyone. It will light the fire under Steem and force it to change for the better, or go the way of Myspace. This is a win-win for the average user.
Thanks for this info you added to the discussion.
To lazy to upvote him
@cryptovestor
Resteeming this!
I love "pros and cons". This is much more convincing then the pure advertising articles that people write about coins.
Very nice @cryptovestor I am resteeming this!
there sure is a LOT that needs improvement
I foresee a lot of competition coming in the space like akasha and other social media platforms. As far as your comments on meritocracy; .... I think in a way, it resembles real life where if you have rich friends, they can help you climb the social/professional ladder faster.... So it seems fair enough to me but there is definitely room for improvement as everywhere in this newborn crypto-industry. Good post btw
Though I'm new to steem, I think it is a great idea which will change our opinion regarding social sites.
Now we have additional value for our time spent on these sites.
Hence I think it is the right time to invest in Steem.
Hope to have support from experts to encourage me in my new journey.
Wow, first good analysis, but I was left wanting in terms of an explanation for why after the 15 problems listed your reason was that its further along than the other cryptos. Allow me add more to your list of reasons to hold for the long term. #1 Over 16 million visitors per month, #2 It Ranks in the top 1000 by Alexa https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/steemit.com #3 Despite issues with conflicts, authors like yourself really produce some kick-ass content, that you can't find anywhere else.
I really liked this one video, it's one of the better that you have made.
Regardless, I saw a lot of people in the comments having bad experiences and an overall bad opinion for Steemit, with witch I can't relate though steemit as you said has big problem especially with the bots.
I read that the founder Dan Latimer was disappointed by the way the platform functions and wants to make Steemit 2.0
and make it right.
What do you think about it?
Edit:
I also think that steemit need a mobile app to be more accessible to most of users.
Hello @cryptovestor
what do you think about the inflationary effect within the steem blockchain?
You make an excellent point: Steem does have a product that actually works, and it's not cryptokitties caliber.