Im sure the post will earn you thousands, but if "astroturfing" means what i assume it means from the context ,your assertion is pretty ridiculous. I guess it does no good to keep saying it, but a transparent attempt to hide a readily apparent truth is only going to hurt the credibility of the platform.. if downvoting didnt effect others rep, id be doing it on this one.
And the part about centralization is intellectually dishonest. Steemit can ban users, hide their posts, and do all those things too.
Um. Why is my assertion ridiculous within the context exactly?
Maybe I misunderstood what astroturfing meant all those years...
I assume it means paid support... like hiring shills to talk up your product. There are a ton of people that have flat out admitted thats what goes on. And even if they had not, its so obvious I cringe every time i see the front page.
The fact that you wrap the paycheck in a vote doesnt change the fact that its a paycheck. And trying to dodge a manifestly obvious truth with a charade about voting. Well it makes the platform look scammy.
Exactly. But is Steemit really paying for people to talk up their products? Steemit in my opinion is offering pay for people to contribute to the overall value of the platform. The posts can be anything - related to anything. You see people posting introduceyourself posts that get paid a lot. Is that astroturfing?
I understand what you're talking about, but I don't think your point is completely valid. But I appreciate you taking time in discussing this issue.
I get what youre saying, but it seems to me exactly the way it will seem to everyone else: like youre arguing a technicality. When the whales at steem are referring to their writers as employees. When you have a guy who says "yeah the owners recruited me to the site thats why i made 20K on a post" thats not people talking about whatever they want.
And also, the fact that talking points get passed down to the main recruits could not be clearer.
So what you have a bunch of people, recruited to "add value to the site" being paid to hit specific talking points.
Now I don't have a problem with this happening, though i think it could be handled in a less hamfisted manner, but denying it when its obviously going on makes the platform look like a scam.
While you're sort of on the right idea with this.. Just because it's censored by steemit.com doesn't mean it isn't visible on the STEEMchain..
STEEM is decentralized. Steemit.com is merely a GUI to access STEEM.
Theymos's forum is about as far from democracy as you can get sadly.
I've seen censorship first hand there. You can't really censor what's on STEEM.
Sorry no. It is DPoS with 19 witnesses. And Dan & Ned control the stake.
Nicely said. Even if Steemit censors your posts(which i haven't seen many cases of, apart from bots), it is still accessible on the blockchain.
so people will be able to read it with what, the command line tool? and i guess if they ban you you can still posst with the command line tool too.
Steem can hide someones posts from 95% of the users on the platform. Attempting to escape that with a technicality, again makes you look disingenuous and the platform look shady.
Im not really a crypto guy. I buy a lot of BTC for my law practice, and i heard about this from one of the dudes I buy btc from. Put 20K in cashed out 100 and powered up 6.
So i have no idea if its better than bitcoin talk. But my point isnt that i don't like steem, or its better than that or worse than this. My point is that singing untrue praises -- and its clear to even a casual user that there is a high degree of centralization on the platform -- then having them upvoted and showcased is ultimately harmful..
Also, ftr, the problem isnt just you. the problem is they upvote and encourage posts like this until the front page looks like an informercial.
Don't you think that is at least better than bitcointalk? They are way worse than Steem. Why does theymos have the right to talk trash about Steem when his site is worse?
Also, Steemit is open source. If people think that the Steemit admins are abusing their powers, we can move to another platform. And lines of code is what underlies these GUIs.