Wish vs Reality
In my last post I spoke about the difficulty in incentivizing behaviour in a complex system. Basically, it is impossible to predict the outcome of group behaviour in response to planned incentives. People are smart and unpredictable; they will always seek out the easiest way to attain a reward, even if the outcome runs counter to the stated goals, or the health of the entire system.
More about why this happens here: Prisoner's Dilemma, and here: Game Theory.
Steemit is a very interesting system created to cross a social media platform with a cryptocurrency. The vision as I understand it was for the 'best' content to rise to the top by incentivizing the rest of the community to only upvote content that they believed would be the most popular. This is achieved by sharing the payout with those who vote - the curators. Find a great article? Upvote it, resteem it for your own followers, and as more and more people recognize the value, you earn more and more for your vote. Seems simple enough, if you are a creator, you should be able to make money by making quality content, and if you have some saved up Steem power, you can earn by upvoting the 'best' content before everyone else does.
But what really happens?
The first problem is the idea of good content.
@techwizardry summed it up very well in a comment that he left on my last post:
Standardizing subjective behavior/perspective is just not possible: some people value memes more than 1000-word posts, and vice versa.
So the first problem is that we don't know what good content actually is. I guess we can assume that someone who is a professional writer, photographer, musician, videographer or the like has the skills to produce better content than average. Or maybe someone who is very good at using Markdown, and can really make their blog 'pop' with great formatting might be said to be producing 'better' content.
The breakdown then, is that nobody really tries to write the best content, or to upvote the best content. We aren't professional content creators, nor are we experts in predicting what others will find valuable. So instead of using Steemit as was intended, we look for ways to make money that doesn't take time, effort, expertise, or guesswork.
The second problem is that of inclusion.
So lets assume that the professional content creator, whether that's a public speaker, writer, musician, meme maker (are there professional meme makers?), cartoonist, photographer, videographer, whatever are creating better content than the other 95% of the population. How do those users earn Steem?
Steemit was not only designed to be a place to create the best possible content. It is also supposed to be a social media site. In order to fulfill that promise, it should be accessible to everyone, and everyone should be able to expect some piece of the rewards pool if they stay engaged with their friends/followers. That's basically the promise right? "Why post on Facebook, when you can get paid to post on Steemit?"
Well Steemit "could" actually work that way. Have 500 Facebook friends? You all can come over here, upvote each others posts, and share in the rewards pool. You aren't really creating quality content, but you are certainly "social media-ing".
The problem with that scenario however is the "Flag" feature, and the community itself who, in an effort to fight copyright infringement and plagiarism, have downvoted normal social media behaviour into oblivion. I personally think that this is extremely shortsighted and does a huge disservice to the community, but other than try to convince @ned to delete the flag button in the next Hardfork, we are stuck with this misguided attempt at self-censoring the exact thing that people want to share in a normal social media site..
I mean really, do any of you see quality original content on Facebook? No, of course you don't, because most people are not capable of creating interesting content. So what do they do? Post about last night's dinner, or check in that they are at the mall, or share other people's content with their group of friends. Even on Twitter, you are either looking at a tweet with 280 characters (is that good content?), or a link to what is often someone else's content. If Steemit wants to seriously get a piece of the social media pie, then we are going to have to allow 'normal' social media behaviour. Why are we limiting people here to having to create? Shouldn't they be able to be rewarded for interacting in the same way as they do now on other sites? Now that would take off!!!
So the breakdown here is that we lose all those users who are not yet capable of or interested in making marketable content, as well as those who were just expecting a social-media site. They either go back to Facebook or Twitter, or they start to devise ways to make money here without developing the skills of a professional content creator. They certainly don't bring all of their FB friends and set up shop over here doing what they did over there. (Our community doesn't allow it). If we want more people to use Steemit, then we need to allow people to post whatever they want without censorship.
In my next blog post, I will discuss ways to maximize returns by accepting how Steemit IS, instead on focussing on how Steemit was expected to be.
I will also get into the incentives/dangers of changing the vote system from a stake weighted system to a 1account/1vote system (which would be disastrous). I will also point out the Steem incentives that are work vey well.
Thank you for reading, voting, sharing. See you next time,
SnubberMike
We are certainly in agreement on the one-vote/one-account reward system. Fixing that so that it is more democratic while still incentivizing longevity/"power" will require that we find a middle ground on the spectrum BETWEEN the current system (oligarchy) and one-vote/one-account (pure democracy.) Fixing that will, IMHO, result in a platform that is far more of a social media site than it is now, along with the "sub-reddit" type stuff that is already in the works.
A middle ground reward system might involve weighting people's voting power by their rep score, or steem power, or a combination, but it would be far less drastic a weighting than the current whale (10,000) to minnow (1) voting-power apparatus we have now.
As you start off your fine article saying, people will always do what maximizes reward while minimizing effort. A mixed reward system such as I have put forward would force people to consider quality when posting, while still rewarding those who took the risk of being here first and putting up their money.
How do you manage multiple accounts ?
I can already see paid-for services which setup many accounts and vote for their clients.
People with multiple accounts should only be able to choose ONE account that can be activated for voting purposes, but the reward system would still apply PER ACCOUNT based on each account's own (steem /rep) statistics.
This is technically impossible to implement, as code is not omnipresent and can't know if different accounts have the same owner.
The rewards would stay the same. Are you just talking about a new way to categorize what is "trending"? This is a front-end problem, in a decentralized system this shouldn't matter. But it is true that the majority of the readers use steemit.com
I agree that reputation of the voting account should be (heavily?) weighted by the reward formula. This would be a real improvement.
There is not currently a way, but someone had a name for the way it could be done yesterday when I was reading around on this topic. I forget what it was called...I'll have to see if I can find that again. Multiple accounts--beyond a legitimate 3-4 for varying actual business models that INDIVIDUALS may need are necessary-- yes, but not beyond that.
When you say "the rewards would stay the same" I'm not sure what you mean. This whole conversation is about adjusting the rewards system. "Trending" is just the most visible example of the faults with the current system.
I cant answer for @mepatriot, but that is one of the reasons (but not the biggest, stay tuned) I think that one-vote/one-account is not a good idea.
Agree. We already have so many fake accounts on Steem owned by single person offering resteem and upvote services.
Rep weighted system is also abusive as by flagging whales can kill any genuine account
Only way is to take off the flag option. Let positivity survive here. All negativity is because of flag option
Thanks again for the thoughtful comments. With your permission, I will quote (and of course give credit to) either your last comment on Part 1 or from this one :)
Sure. Thanks for your good efforts on this front.
I explain my thoughts on the reward system better here, though:
https://steemit.com/steem/@mepatriot/making-steemtit-rewards-fair
I will link that one. Thanks
My pleasure.
maximizing the reward is a good thing to earn money!
Not really. Maximizing the fairness, and distributing rewards to incentivize long-term participation and new membership is preferable.
I suggested a sigmoidal visibility curve in my post here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@nealmcspadden/account-based-voting-is-a-terrible-idea-for-steem
Yea...pretty much along the same lines as I've been saying too. Well done.
The first formula we try is probably going to have to be tweaked over time, no matter how we originally set it up. The important thing, of course, is that we AVOID one-account/one-vote at all costs, and that we get off the current system. The formulas can always be tinkered with to adjust as we learn what works best for all concerned.
How you created content to post here?Are you content writer?
I was not a content creator before coming to Steemit, no. I am happy with the content I am creating now, but I am always trying to improve.
Tu planteamiento tiene mucha lógica y ciertamente es así, estoy seguro y podría decir que casi convencido que @ned tiene planeado como enfrentar esta problemática. No está de mas decirlo y comentarlo en todos los idiomas para que Steemit sea una red social para todos y también estoy seguro que esta red social podrá sectorial a las personas que generen conocimiento, como a las personas que la usan activamente para decir que comieron, si ya se bañaron si están paseando con el perro o cosas así y recompensar a los creadores de conocimiento.
Tomemos en cuenta el valor de un comentario y un post es lo que realmente valdrá para el éxito de esta red. Sino tendremos un facebook hueco y en busca de likes.
Great article..it is quality. I voted (my votes are kinda a lil deal), I resteemed, and I am leaving a comment that if you haven't already signed up to be apart of Narrative Network then you should....They are getting a lot of things right that Steemit tried to do. the founders are all writers...the system values quality content... and no bots.
We should separate rewards from trend. Let the reward system stay as it is . Take off flag option. But introduce various trend options - based on earned. Rewards, upvoted, comments, rep weighted upvotes etc
There is life-frustrated closed-minded nerds here, craving cyber-power. And they get it through flagging.
I agree this is a pretty immature behaviour.
Flag option be retired
It would let the door open to spam, ads, phishing...
I think the best is to take in consideration the reputation of an account for its votes.
It seems like the users on here should be able to better compete with the bots. More people could probably buy steem and power up and more people could probably convert their SBD's into steem and power up.
I'm hopeful that I will eventually be able to compete with the bots.
This is a very meaningful discussion of important issues. If I can add anything, it's probably that the democratic approach works. The rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer, because of their own actions. On top of that, some people rise above the majority to help others here on Steemit. -But no matter how much they try to help, those who don't really enjoy the platform will eventually leave. Whether they earn or not won't matter. 'Social-mediaing' is fun and they will keep doing it elsewhere. Too much social-mediaing, at least for me, makes people poorer. This is just based on my observation.
-Some memes are worth more than a thousand words if they have strong messages and convey emotions really quickly. It's the same idea behind limiting a song to four minutes. Any more than that may not contribute to the value of the piece and may even cause the composer to lose listeners halfway through the song depending on other factors.
All can not be assumed to be of equal intelligence. So what is great content to u may not be for me as I am not that intelligent.
This part:
is brilliant.
Assuming the account creation limits were fixed and people were able to actually make some STEEM for doing the normal social media things, then we'd have a huge pool of potential readers.
The bigger the pool of readers, the more chances the real content creators have for getting upvotes.
STEEM has such a bright future! I can't wait to see what happens!
very interesting
I totally agree with you on this:
I told my 15 year old daughter about Steemit and she had a look and said this platform is for "old" people.
She writes and post her stories on whatpad but she said she will not do the same on Steemit although I told her that she can earn at Steemit. She post her drawings on deviantart & instagram but she won't do the same at steemit. so how exactly do I convince her?
U hit the point. Steem culture of supervision to make sure all behave in some specific manner which is not freedom but bonded labor. Young blood does not like it.
Very accurate, I want to see the steem team experiment with more economic models to increase the content quality and reduce abuse.
Forget quality issue. Quality is subjective my brother
Steemit is very complex, I agree. But it is evolving and learning. Steemit today will not be the same Steemit 10 years from now.
Great article! I agree with you on almost all of your points!
If Steemit is to succeed, we as a community should not be dictating what is and what is not good content - that is why each user can vote using their own power according to their likes and dislikes! People who want to work as a group to support specific content types can most certainly do so by delegating and/or joining citation trails, but we should not be telling other users what they should and should not vote for based on same arbitrary and subjective criteria.
Your paragraph here hits at the heart of what I believe is the major problem with Steemit :
Too many people on here who have a lot of clout believe that they are the final arbiters of what should be considered "quality content", and anything that goes counter to their beliefs gets censored and penalized. For example, people say memes have no value, yet there are many websites like 9gag and imgflip that have huge amounts of traffic, users and page views, which are the true currency of the web. These sites have very lofty valuations, yet they would be considered trash by many of the whales and too bloggers on here.
So-called "quality content" is meaningless if people don't care about the subject matter, and conversely, the biggest stinking pile of shit content can have huge, real monetary value if it appeals to the masses and generates traffic and pageviews! Should a well-researched and written scientific paper get huge rewards, even if only a very small number of users actually care about the content & feel it has value? Similarly, should a meme that hundreds of users enjoyed, but which only took 5-10 minutes to create, be relegated to trash bin because a group of users believe that type of content is of little value?
I think it is ridiculous how some people on here try to force their ideals of good and bad on other users through censorship and flagging. Who are you to tell other people what they should and should not enjoy?!?! Even more so, when Steemit is supposed to be a decentralized platform where all users regardless of their power have a stake! We currently have a very small group of whales forcing their ideals on the rest of the community, and behavior like that are what will be the death of this platform.
We should all be doing whatever we can to grow the active user base and encourage diversity in content - that is the true path to creating value in a social media network! And people should need no further proof than to look at the valuation of Facebook, where nearly 100% of the content would be considered trash by Steemit standards! Are we all really such content elitists that we would spite ourselves by suppressing the ability of people to create and support the content that they deem worthy using their own personal criteria & beliefs?
Otherwise we should just abandon all hopes of STEEM/Steemit being adopted by the masses, and just accept that this platform will be nothing more than a circle jerk for a small, select group who create what is deemed by themselves as "quality content"!
Good point about no original content on Facebook. However, its all about relationship building so a simple picture of your kids on a beach can be very valuable.
So should be on Steem
Agree. I do that as well. Too proud of my boy to not share stories and adventures I have with him. :)
I feel that u are missig they reason though and that is wealth sistribution.
I think ateemit would pretty well if the ap was more distributed.
I have mixed feelings after reading this. I agree that it is bad to censor. Just look at the harm that has been done to creators and readers on other platforms. However, I feel jaded because I have been making original content for about 6 months now. I'm new to Steemit but I have not made one cent yet on other platforms. It's frustrating in the beginning because you work so incredibly hard for virtually nothing. I make no money and have some traffic that is growing very slowly. People I run into in public say they love my content. They may just be saying that. My content may be horrible. I don't know. You begin to second guess yourself after a while. I came to Steemit hoping to find some small measure of success just to keep me going. I realize to some one penny means nothing but to me I just want some sort of benchmark of success. Slow traffic growth alone is ok I guess. I'd love to say I made my first dime. That would be awesome at this point! I'm not being sarcastic. The point is people with a huge social following who scrape other people's stuff really infuriate me about now. You are right though. If they have a huge following from scraping content they too have a right to be here. It's just frustrating that's all. Sorry, just had to vent a little!
Wonderful post. Thank you for sharing @snubbermike
Things dont really work the way they should be due to many reasons.
etc...
Many things need to be controlled and fixed to have The Successful Dream Platform that we all wish to see.
Excellente!
Agreed!
I think i success in my life by steemit... So its my dream
From a friend who gave it a try and left promptly, "it is trying to be Medium without the quality. Exhausting."
And another, "A big tech bro circle jerk to Steemit and crypto blog posts."
I really can't disagree even though I have found some good short fiction here and would not have found it elsewhere.
I do wish there was more of a social element, though. At times it feels like work trying to find the "quality content" we hear so much about, and not posting because a picture of your cat to share with friends - the ones who remain - will get flagged. Yes, Snapshot and Zappl are options for "social media" type stuff, but it still posts to the steemit site. I don't think Facebook or Twitter needs to worry very much because they have no pressure to perform, scheme, buy votes, and measure up in order to participate/enjoy.
Agree, maybe there should be an additional Follower category that features closer friends/followers, as in Facebook.
There are steemit profiles that other users have created to exclusively post pictures of their cats, but they seem to have developed a loophole by making a blog about the world from a cat's purrspective. Purrrfectly inmocent if you ask me!
I never thought I would long for cat pics but I am at that point! I will look for them. Right now when I open Steemit, I either feel like I am going on a job interview or watching a room full of people auditioning for a TV series.
You hear that @zeldathecat? More cat pics needed! Blog away my furr friend!
I totally get the feeling though. I posted a long story about my living situation out of frustration for the first time, an a bunch of people decided to comment on my post and tell me I wasn't allowed to do that and that because my gofundme link was in it, that I meant to scam people... Like.. No. I was asking for people to maybe help me get the word out at most. I did not ask people to do shit. All I said was that "any donations, upvotes, resteems and shares to other social media will be appreciated." and apparently someone was triggered because my life isn't all rainbows and fairietales... It got to the point where I had to start flagging their comments for harassment and mute their profiles.. Which I really didn't like having to do. I wouldn't normally do that, but after it moved from one post to more than one post where these accounts were doing this, I kinda had to 😐.
I love this platform and majority of the users here for their individual contributions, but some people need to learn how to calm themselves down and communicate like adults, or lie back and just enjoy the cat pictures!!
Purrrrfect 😸 I shall start blogging more frequently soon! Currently hunting the red dot again!
I actually feel more censored here in the "no censorship" site than others - always having to consider what I post or comment. Funny how that worked out. I am a news junkie and like to post links to news people may not see otherwise. Parley seemed to be the solution for that. Nope, Steemit Big Brother began going after all the Parley posts on here because they said it was spam and not quality content.
I can't believe anyone would have the nerve to correct you for posting about your life. That is crazy. Gofundme links are everywhere on other sites but I don't see anyone getting uptight about them. I say link away!
I plan to still post updates on the situation weekly. I don't care if others see it as spam. It is my life. My followers will follow me if they like my other posts like my daily tarots and my upcoming indoor garden and personal views. I really don't care what these individuals have to think or to say. If they disagree they can either harass me, which will get them downvoted and blocked, or they can politely mind their own business. The third and least traveled path is to kindly state their opinion with out being aggressive or attacking me, while also being a decent human being.. But no one seems to know how to act that way anymore...
I really liked your answer and I agree, I do believe that stemians have to worry about creating quality content, although in this moment many worry about the income in the near future I do believe that people that hold de Steem Power will search quality.
Bots are a problem and are quite unfair because there are lots of post that have upvotes but don't have any quality so flagging should have more impact if you have Steem Power. Also some random verifiers should be implemented so spammers and bots should be reduced.
I have been reading your posts from part 1 and I really have to say that this platform needs to grow more in order to gain more users. Currently, it has some problems that you are pointing out and hopefully it gets better in near future :D
Thanks for the great post. It really helps me to think about the current problems at Steemit. I can't wait for your next post!
This is the kind of discussion I like. I've been pointing out that the platform is confusing. No wonder the members are confused! Looking forward to the next post.
You don't understand, plaguarised material is being downvoted for legal reasons.
The law says you can quote other people's material in snippets known as "fair use"), but you can't make money off.
Copypasta of other people's stuff to earn money on steemit without permission of the owner of the material or sharing the proceeds with them is a crime.
What you are advocating - rampant theft of other people's stuff to make money, is a crime and will likely get steemit shut down. It takes only one disgruntled author to sue and that's it for this platform.
This is NOT a normal social media site because money is involved.
I totally agree with you, Steemit is seen like a simple opportunity to do money and not like a social media
Making quality content and get paid for that.
Looks like this is not so simple as it seems to be.
Hi, I'm new on Steemit. Thank you for sharing this post!
Out of topic, but is there anyway to contact a steem developer? I have an idea and feedback I'd like to share, any help much appreciated.
Have you tried the Discord chat? If not start there - https://discordapp.com/login It is where all the ~mega~STEEMers hang out. Hope that helps!
Yeah I'll check it out.
steemit is the best platform to earn and gether knowlwdge and I must say your every post is very good .helps me and motiveted me too work hard in steemit a lot.
I agree with your analysis in its entirety, I want to add that I have seen excellent publications from people who have years of experience and also generate high quality content and almost nobody votes for their membership, or people who publish content of lower quality and get a large amount of votes, I think that also discourages a little to people who like and care about creating good content.
You are so Right!!
steemit is the best platform ever growing for income thumbs up if you guys agree
Very interesting your post. I'm new here and I'm strill trying to see what can I create that is actually interesting for the gaming community and I will give a chance to WoW/LoL content.
Thanks for your post, it really helps :D
Very interesting, there's never a perfect system. Humans are not perfect
I agree. Everyone should be able to expect some piece of the rewards pool.
There is no perfect system to determine what "good" content actually is. Nevertheless, Steemit is a step in the right directio. It definitely needs to be perfected and this will happen over time.
I think it is important to recognize that there are different types of social media. Take, for instance, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Twitter. Each is very different, and it is impossible to compare them on the same level. Most people are on all of these sites, but use them for different purposes. Steemit is a unique network too, and it may have a place in our daily lives among the other big social media sites, but a couple things need to happen. It needs to make adjustments to become more user-friendly, it needs famous people to join, and lastly, it needs to go viral somehow. The Steemit network still has a long way to go, only time will tell if it will ever stand along side the othersocial media giants.
Agree with this. There's a lot of talk, but one needs to assess what Steemit is as an entity, and what the more longer term users are providing. Sure, there are many short-term users who will cheat the system and then get bored of that, but over time Steemit should mature to be an 'ecosystem' that does what it intends: rewards those who post unique content that their followers like.
User-friendly. Yes, a little, although a learning curve also deters a lot of people. Certain areas like images etc I agree.
More exposure: yes.
Many of the other changes that are mentioned need to go back and think again about what kind of website you think Steemit is. Personally, I like the trending etc categories. But we need to try and lessen the whale war content, but if that's not possible, it might just have to be one of the downsides that balance with the upsides.
I agree that specifying good content is almost impossible but what about good authors? I think that good authors are mostly those that are active in their comment section so I created notification app that will show you everytime someone like that writes a post. https://steemit.com/steemit/@petermail/notification-steemit-app
In a way, I agree with you on the flagging issue. It kinda seems like what shouldnt be here. You piss off a whale, and he flags you to your death, just because he can. Sigh
I have absolutely no problem with people posting memes, selfies or pictures about their days.. But please.. For the sake of keeping things interesting.. Write like a paragraph or more just telling us how your day went, how the meme made you feel or how it relates to your life, or something. Make the post your own and really own your content that way. Even if the meme is unoriginal, your thoughts and feelings are what matters! That is what I want to see.
Thank you for posting this.
If you think they're posting spam, you too have the power to flag them, remember.
I like to give them at least a day or two to tell me their intentions before flagging them if they are posting spammy like comments. I plan to flag if they don't reply.
steemit is the best platform to earn and gether knowlwdge and I must say your every post is very good .helps me and motiveted me too work hard in steemit a lot.
We have agreed with each and every one-vote / one-account reward system to agree with the agreed upon long-term strengths. "The growth of a platform is the result of a platform that has been successful for" sub-random "work for social reasons. Representative award system strength, or a combination The power of voting has increased
Reminds me of the US Congress split between the Senate (2 seats per state) and the House (seats per population). This system has worked well to distribute power evenly.
Wow! Great work snubbermike! Your post has appeared on the hot page after 25min with 271 votes.
You got a 17.13% upvote from @postpromoter courtesy of @snubbermike!
Want to promote your posts too? Check out the Steem Bot Tracker website for more info. If you would like to support the development of @postpromoter and the bot tracker please vote for @yabapmatt for witness!
Great work
Good job!!! I reestem your post.
This post has received a 47.9 % upvote from @boomerang.
There is no perfect system. Every alternative has its pros and cons.
i will link that one