Reddit Meets Bitcoin - Steem Growth and Impact From a Beginner's Eyes

in #steemit8 years ago

new social media phenomenon taking place with the help of my favorite technology: blockchain. Being alive on the Steemit network for the first couple of days now I have tons of takeaways and information garnered from poking about and finding a home for myself on the platform.I remember my first interaction with Steemit, almost exactly a year ago. A VICE article written by @corintxt brought me into the scope of the

After minutes on the social media masterpiece, I realized that Steem is quickly becoming a haven for bots, scams, dishonest fraudsters, and complete lunatics. Now, don't get me wrong; I found TONS of great material here and learned more in the past two days via social media than FB/TWIT or any other platform ever allowed. This great information does come with a caveat though: To post your own material, or to be noticed, you need a helping hand from a BIG fish. A million minnows can do the same job that a giant whale can, in the sense that a single upvote from a chosen few will cast you into overnight stardome. Let alone a repress or follow.

I came to Steem not to become wealthy, but to get away from the BS experience that you find on all other social media sites; the harassment, spam, fake news, and a whole drudge report of other general crap. After seeing what I described above I could only come to the conclusion that this is true here as well, but I was proven wrong.

Case Study: More recently I came across some hate speech directed towards a woman and her family from a supposed "Christian Revolutionary." (Please feel free to define that for me.) I couldn't believe the words I was reading directed towards a curator of great material, all for seemingly no reason. I investigated the chain to see if there was anything behind this tomfoolery but was even more enraged to find out that this individual was WELL KNOWN for his numerous spam and bot accounts as well as for his completely BS comments and attention-seeking posting patterns. As I was investigating this morning, I realized that on every single page-load while switching between posts on this particular user's account, their reputation would drop by at least two points. He started at 56 when I dropped on his author page for the first time, and in only 20 minutes was down to -16. Right away I realized the beauty in Steemit, the community takes action and the perpetrator is punished accordingly. @krystle and her abuse case had achieved momentary poetic justice.

The part that bothered me was a post by @sherlockholmes who revealed this same notorious character had over a thousand (1,300+) alternate accounts that were actively being used to create mayhem. In my mind, I can't begin to imagine why someone would take on such a ridiculous feat all for the glory of being a scumbag. I had found my first Steemit Troll.

What makes Steemit different from the rest?

In my opinion, the feature set, and the ability to create a living for content creators that previously had no exposure. The impact that Steemit has will only continue in a positive light if these people are investigated and taken care of accordingly. Steemit is growing by the day, today we hit 300,000 users. A new user such as myself trying to create a space for themselves for learning and passing on their own knowledge will easily be turned off by characters that use this legendary site for nefarious acts and brutal comment drops. Steemit as a community needs to handle these situations accordingly, and as I grow I promise to be part of the SOLUTION, not the problem.

Growth

Going forward I hope that users will stop and think before they click. Realize the words written on this site are permanent. Realize that the upvote or downvote you're contemplating could actually change someone's life for the positive or negative. I don't know about you guys, but I wake up every day trying to do my best and to bring the best to others. Steemit created a platform to bring YOUR best to other's, don't misuse it for slander and judgment.


Thanks for reading! Please follow, upvote, comment, and most of all: Reply.
Debate is the beginning of innovation.

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-jgr33nwood
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Good writeup! I can see that you have signed up recently so welcome aboard. Take this upvote and see you in your next post!
As a newcomer to steemit, it's not easy getting those first upvotes so I suggest you to try out Steemfollower as you can earn 5x more steem than just upvoting by yourself! It's a simple and safe vote exchange that is free to use. I have more info on it in this post where I go over the system in more depth and, believe it or not, this has become my most upvoted post yet.

Welcome to steemit. Its just transitional to say that . I really like your message. Holmes has an L in it . Ill need to remember that .

Thanks, and that's good to know. Lol hard one to remember.

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