My boyfriend just pointed me to Steemit, and this was the first bit of content I opted to explore. Wow...really interesting concept and enlightening dialogue about it. Prompted me to take a chance. Have now established an account and will be looking to curate and create. I feel more hopeful than I have in a long time about the possibility of overcoming--or at least happily navigating around--what I would term constant nannying and thought-shaping by public-private partnerships, as manifested via mainstream media, social media platforms, and related avenues of communication.
One of the things that particularly struck me in this dialogue was the observation that lots of platforms start out well...Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. The point was made that everyone's a purist at the start. But, as noted, where things often go terribly wrong with unfiltered content is when those running the platforms become more concerned with leveraging them as profit centers. Clearly, things take money to run. The fiscal need to ensure an enterprise can remain operational is not a triviality. I don't begrudge anyone the need to make ends meet and/or profit from a venture. What's depressing, though, is the way these platforms end up playing right into the existing power structures. The principle of making a buck shorts out the principle to have an unfettered venue.
As such, it's remarkable to see people thinking deeply about how actually to foster--and, moreover, truly incentivize, including monetarily--engaged and frank dialogue, philosophical discussion, information-sharing, journalism, etc, in ways that do not kill free thought, honest communication, and open inquiry. Really intrigued. Can't wait to see what comes of this avenue and what role I and others I know might be able to play in bringing such a noble experiment to fruition.
Steemit sure seems like a great skeleton--onto which a lot of healthy flesh and blood can be layered as the concept and development continue to unfold. I'm in.