For some days I was wondering about the newly launched trust score algorithm for Steem called User Authority (UA). I find it a very innovative reputation metric. This may actually lead the already ineffective Steem Reputation Score system dead.

Steem Rep Score is dead,
UA is the new unofficial Rep now

The Steem Rep score has become a laughable figure incapable to give any clue about the user account as it is easily being abused by buying bot upvotes. Even outsiders like Byteball project soon recognized its flaw when they made it the basis of their airdrop. The present Rep system is based on the total upvote value received by the author. It doesn't distinguish between human upvotes, bot upvotes, paid upvotes, upvote exchanges etc.

So here comes the new algorithm called Steem UA ( @steem-ua). It's a complex algorithm that primarily takes into account the trust level of your followers and the trust of their followers and then theirs and on and on. So this makes your actions more accountable on the blockchain. How many and who follow you is essentially the important aspect of a blogger's trustworthiness. So this score is far better than the existing Rep. score system.

May it revamp the Trending feed!

We hope to see several dapps start to use its API to show user's UA soon. May be someone can even change the present Trending & Hot feed by incorporating quality content using UA API. And if it happens, this will be a remarkable change in Steem platform. Heavy bot use for making a post trending will automatically come to a stand still. Bot's profitability will decrease and people might take back their delegated SP and start manual curation again. Am I dreaming? Time will tell that.

I'm aware of my dwindling follower base

For some time, I had stopped caring about who was following me or whom my content was targeted to. Major chunk of my upvote value came from the paid bot upvotes that never read my content. So very few people were reading my content and I realized that my current following is somewhat a fake following. With the launch of UA score, I guess, many would like to clean up their following and actually pay attention to their feed.

Of late, I've noticed that whenever I was publishing my posts in Hindi or vernacular; several accounts used to unfollow me. But I didn't care and kept writing whatever I wanted to.

Advocating animal rights and veganism too has made me an unwanted person to be followed by many people. So, even when I write in English, I also criticise a lot. But that's how I'm and I don't quibble about people unfollowing me. I want only those people should follow my blog who actually like to read my posts at least once in a month, if not always.

But Hindi blogs will flourish with rise in Indian users

Lately, many people from India are joining this platform and many of them can read & speak Hindi. So it makes writing in Hindi easier for me. However, it won't help much to my UA score at present but I hope it will do at some point soon. UA is more or less a popularity score in which popularity of your follower too counts. So more Hindi speakers joining here will make blogging in Hindi popular among themselves and collectively improve their UA over time. Are you ready to blog in Hindi?

Currently, I see there is only one Indian account in the top 100 UA score list and he is none other than @firepower. I'd like to congratulate him for his efforts and talent to single-handedly representing the Indian flag on this list. However he doesn't follow too many accounts, it's primarily because of his community development efforts that I get so many Indian accounts as my followers. So all thanks to him and everyone who follows and reads (or intend to read 😉) my blog.

What's your UA score?

I'm curious to see what UA score many of my friends and followers possess but don't know any way to check that. Do you know any way to check it? If not, you can check your own UA score and post it in comment if you would like to share it with me.

Let me disclose my UA. As expected, it's not very good and is less than half of the top UA scorer @jesta. It's 3.897. I need to work on it but am not ready yet. I'll take some months to change my blogging habits, if I decide to change. But let's see how it all goes. I'm quite excited to see some positive third party development which can have a very positive impact on Steem blockchain functioning.