That was interesting! Thanks for sharing and putting so much time into this.
What is the largest problem on Steem? How do we address it?
Hey there, my name is Ruben Cress. From the point of view from a new user on Steemit (Joined January 2018), here are my thoughts about the ‘largest problems’ on Steem. I think there are quite a few challenges on the platform that could be addressed as problems but should be seen as prioritized improvements.
Authentic people
One of the first questions that I got is: How real are you? Are you a real person? The worries people have about people being authentic and real are legit, so far, I have seen a number of ‘fake’ people (scammers) running blogs on Steemit with stolen images and/or identities. I’ve noticed the major community of Steemit are willing to help other people out, especially new users on the platform. Being skeptical about giving your up-vote is a good thing, please continue to be skeptical. But since ‘whales’ have the (Steem) power to influence the popularity of a post/person, the last thing you want to be concerned about is: Is this a real authentic person, or did I give my up-vote to someone who is fake, this question should not be spinning around in your head, despite any amount of SBD upvoted.
Side problems
- Spammers: The number of spammers will compound and lead eventually in more spammer¬s and scammers, which will lead in server overflood. (unnecessary data being stuck in the blockchain)
- Bots: I noticed that bots comment on posts, claiming that you have entered a contest (Personally: I do not want to enter a contest, unless I say that I am entering one). For new users, this could be confusing.
- Identity Theft / Plagiarism. Without really knowing the person is Authentic, you can assume there will be plagiarized by ‘fake’ people. Identity theft is a huge problem in my opinion since we are given 7 days to ‘edit’ a post.
Possible solution:
Getting people verified before they get rewarded in SBD. Point-system? Rookie-Area? No access to the ‘official’ board until verified/approved?
By verifying people before they get rewarded on their posts, you would scare the spammers/scammers and make it less interesting for people to make 100 accounts. It would be harder for people to abuse identity theft. Steemcleaners is doing a wonderful job on attacking people who plagiarize. They are scanning a lot of posts. A specific area for new users would increase the ‘focus’ on ‘how legit are you?’.
Which leads me to another large problem I’d like to address.
Copyright / Plagiarism.
I’ve only be a member for a few weeks, and I’ve seen a lot of users, use Copyright protected content. Images, logo’s, artwork, texts and so on. This is a huge problem in my eyes, I am a photographer and my images get stolen/used without my permission quite some times. Which leads me to the responsibility of the user. Verifying the user. Flagging is a powerful tool for users. My posts received some flagging. But I am authentic. All the content I post, are mine. But still I got flagged. Anyone can flag a post. So how dangerous is this ‘flagging’ option actually if we add the personal way of flagging someone we dislike?
I could go in deeper, but I would love to hear your thoughts about this @aggroed.
From what I’ve seen the major priority that should be fixed is, creating accounts, and verifying users.
Very very good follow up with this comment. Thank you for your time thats for sure. The last one hits me too. the copyright. I see more and more violation and I can see issues arising. I guess it will take a proactive community to help out. thats a tough reliance though
Thanks :-)
@Steemcleaners and @Originalworks are putting work out there to keep Steemit clean and.. original ;-)
I would avoid using originalworks. It is completely useless bot that doesn't work in most of the cases :-)
https://steemit.com/steemit/@fingolfin/original-works-bot-a-bot-that-doesn-t-work
I dont really know anything about it to be honest
oh wow so much to learn