Since it was initially posted here, and since it was also directed to me on an open channel in chat, I am reposting @the-alien 's original response to me, which he deleted, at the bottom.
The hysterical tone of the reply, as well as the numerous personal insults, make me even more skeptical about this project. As I said in my initial post, i like to give people the benefit of the doubt. When i look at projects like this, I want to believe the best. FWIW, i have gone out of pocket maybe $1500 total on this site, just to give people money for posts i found interesting or helpful. I also have close to 80K steem power that i don't really use. You had an opportunity to convince me that you could understand and sympathize with my concerns (which, btw, many share). Instead, you significantly increased my unease about projects such as this.
Given the support this has from whales with far more steem resources than I have, i guess at the end of the day i wouldnt have been significant anyway.
But being positive is not the same as checking your ability to think critically at the door. And not taking a moment to wonder if there should be thousands a week in rewards going to a blog about curation is just bad critical thinking. Especially when that distribution seems to fly in the face of the stated purpose of the project (to get more blogging reward for aspiring authors).
Even if the answer is ultimately that yes, this is a beneficial way to spend X% of the blogging reward pool, an inability to look at the matter critically and logically (or the view that such critical thinking is somehow tnatamount to an accusation of wrongdoing) is ultimately harmful to the platform.
I was done with this issue when i posted my first response. I am truly done now. Its clear where the-alien stands on the matter. I hope others reading my comments will take a more sober view and interpret them as they were intended, as food for thought.
And that's the part where you humiliate yourself as you show your real face. I work for free as you are fully aware, that's public domain so don't act like you don't know.
Check the wallet, I never kept a single SBD from the upvotes, anytime any whale that supports Curie manually upvotes me, I send it to the project. Keep in mind these people used to upvote my posts in many occasions, and now I donate the absolute 100% of that.
Not only that, but I don't even vote my own posts you idiot, check it out! You know why? Because their votes were tethered to mine, so that vote is better used to help someone else who needs it more.
Not only I have never taken a dime from this project, but I donated a lot of what I made to the project on top of it all. Who the fuck you think pays for those finders fees, moderators..etc? Certainly not you.
We're trying to build something here, but I guess some people much rather try destroy with treacherous false accusations.
Aside from the monetary aspect I'm sacrifying, I sacrifice several hours per day every day to help people while ill-intentioned people like yourself try to troll people with perverted accusations.
Some of us do our best for the prosperity of steemit. And steemit ows me nothing by the way, I don't feel owed anything, all I do, I do voluntarily because I do fucking care about this platform.
So keep your accusation eslewhere.
All I said is true.
Easily verifiable, open source and all. :)
And I stand by it, steemit owes me nothing, I don't feel owed. What I do I do voluntarily because I do fucking care about this platform.
I stand by all of that.
That's the difference between me and you, I focus on helping, even if it's for free. You focus on trying to bring other people down.
Do what you want, just keep it else where. As I said earlier keep your accusations elsewhere. You have the entire platform and chat to yourself. You can troll me there.
Just leave me alone, ok? Accuse me elsewhere. Somewhere where I don't get notifications.