How Is Steemit Different from Facebook and Reddit?
What is Steemit? It is basically a social media platform similar to Facebook or you may have heard of Reddit, where users can post content, upload and curate content. So how is is platform different from Facebook and Reddit?
Facebook & Reddit
First of all Facebook and Reddit are centralized. That means they have somebody who controls the platform, where's in Steemit there is nobody who controls the platform.
In Steemit you have the only pair of keys to your own account and there's nobody else who has those keys. When the platform as a whole has to make certain decisions then the users vote for the proposals they like with their unique key.
The second important point to distinguishes Steemit from Facebook and Reddit is that it is completely transparent. So with Facebook and Reddit, there's a lot of things going on behind the scenes that you don't have access to. On Facebook, there are a lot of feeds that you don't have access to outside of your friend circle, but with Steemit it's all open. So everyone can view everything that's posted and everything that's upvoted. You can also view the code, the underlying mechanism of the system. If you're a coder or your friend a coder then you can check that everything is working as it should work.
Finally what distinguishes this platform from Facebook and Reddit is that it gives rewards directly to the users who post content and vote on content. If you post an article there that is really good and gets a lot of upvotes then you get certain payments. And the payment is done directly with cryptocurrency. It's also a mechanism where if you vote, you also get rewards and your reward is proportional to how accurate you are on voting for a good content. So if you vote for something before it gets popular and you're one of the early voters who made this big contribution to making this content popular then you are rewarded for your efforts and this incentivizes people to go through a lot of posts and check that everything is all the good.
You might ask yourself all these things, the transparency, decentralization and the reward system, it sounds a bit complex maybe too good to be true. But all of this possible because of blockchain technology so you may have heard of Bitcoin is very successful. The market capitalization the value of one as a whole is about 10 billion dollars now. It has been subjected for the past eight years since inception, it has been subject to a lot of attacks and people have tried to hack it and gain the system but nobody has succeeded and Steemit is built on the same kind of technology. You might wonder how are the rewards created in Steemit well they are created exactly like the rewards in Bitcoin. In Bitcoin, the network issues new bitcoins for people who mine, secure and verify the transactions on the network. The same is true in Steemit. We know that this kind of system works, a decentralized network issues new currencies to pay for its own security verification. Steemit uses this process to pay for the people who post and vote on content. These are really the main features and the main reason, it's not impossible to suppose that Steem and Steemit will continue to grow just like Bitcoin did the last eight years.
To sum up, I think we should realize that the value of Steemit is that it enables a system where the system pays for the most valuable content. This also serves as a kind of what is called inbound marketing, where people search different things on Google. They may search for makeup or cryptocurrencies or news or stuff like that and if a good article is posted on Steemit then Google will index this result. You have users coming in directly from Google so people will search for things they are interested in, and by accident, the Steemit platform has produced content that is valuable for this audience so it draws in more and more users as it gets more valuable and more resources to pay for more content. It's really interesting viral dynamic. So I think that sum it up on how Steemit is different from Facebook and Reddit.
My problem with steemit so far witch i didn't see mentioned, is it empower s people to be more hateful and more discriminatory all just for the fact if i really wanted to take out a small 200k loan, dump it into steemit, and go around down voteing anybody i don't like either based on their race, skin color, even just a simple post if i don't like it, hell i could down vote them just because they have long hair, and there nothing stopping this kind of abuse, i have already seen it happen with a charity page for cancer patients, a user literally commented down vote cause think this is a scam, and that page received nothing from their post as a direct result, weather it was an actual charity page or not i do not know i did not do any real research into that matter i was just reading the page and they said they where down voted, and that's pretty much what is turning me and my friends away from steemit, and back to facebook. why would we come here when all it take is some guy with some money to come and ruin anything we try to do all over the fact of either i don't like you or your post or your race, or i can just throw more money than you at steemit than you ha ha look at me down vote. but those are just my thought on the matter, i never really see this being talked much about on steemit just the good side of it. and right now there seems to be more bad than good with steemit
My advice is to only put in what you can afford to lose. I do agree that some people abuse the system. Hope we can see through that and not believe every we see. But I do believe there's an opportunity for those who like writing content. Fb doesn't even pay a penny for your post. But I do respect your opinion.
how do you down vote?
I fell in love with the fact that users are shareholders by virtue of design, and have say in the major changes to the platform. I have been trying to tell all of my friends on social media about steemit. This is a great post to explaining a lot of topics in a concise article. Thank you!
Your welcome! Happy to help! Hope all your friends will join you on this journey soon!
Since I tried steemit I love it without a doubt I'll stick with it, thanks for the post
In short, It's the best social media I've ever used.
My oath.
In my opinion, steemit is better than any other. First, i can reach more people here because people eager to read and share. Second, content is more qualified here and really various. And third, i don't feel i need to check on my other social media accounts once i get here.
Thank you steemit!
I feel the same, I haven't been on FB for a while. I love it here!
Here is another good write up from @vaansteam. Steemit is actually in a class of its own and a first of its kind. I hope the platform flourishes beyond our expectations. Could you share your thoughts on the recent decline in the price of steem?
That's a very good suggestion, thanks for that. :)
First I joined for the reward system but now that I have access to really good quality content I am eager to create some my own. The steem comunity is amazing, we are lucky to be the ones who joined early
I agree the community is amazing and that would be awesome if we found it earlier. But it's still a beta version so we're are not that late. Let's keep growing from here!
Good write up. I would say that Facebook is basically social media and Reddit is a forum. Steemit is a blogging platform. Decentralised of course. And yes, I like that Steemit is self-regulatory through upvotes and flagging by the community itself. That does not stop people from trying to game the system but I'm enjoying it so far.
I agreed! Thanks for your awesome comment :)
I just feel that SteemIt is way too transparent. I don't know if that's a good thing or what. If people start using steemit just like facebook, stalking would be more easier
Yes, stalking hahaha and It could be seen by anyone
Nice post! Try (pls) to calculate your bids on Upvote Bots =)
There is a calculator on the site
best wishes
Thank you for the tips :)
Upvoted and Resteemed.
This is great post. I am a big fan of platforms where the users are stakeholders. The perge on YouTube recently is a great example of what happens when content creators have no say and get left out in the cold.
Thank you so much for that. Have a blessed day!
You too, check out my post here:
https://steemit.com/news/@fabbyd/us-shutdown-and-the-dollar