Society: Bots and Technology Don't Build Communities... PEOPLE Do!
Yesterday, I wrote about having a "backup plan" when disaster strikes... the post was inspired by the DDoS attack on Steemit that rendered the site almost unusable for about nine hours on Thursday night and Friday morning.
Today I wanted to briefly touch on something interesting-- and to me a little alarming-- that arose out of this outage.
Who's REALLY Running the Show? When Technology Takes Over
How is YOUR web out together?
If you're interested in statistics and the nuts and bolts of "How Steemit is Doing," @penguinpablo publishes a great daily update that's pretty much a summary of "Steemit by the Numbers."
For example, yesterday, Steemit passed the 400,000 accounts mark! Go us!
Of course, the current reports covers the period including the site outage. Notably number of posts dropped radically, number of comments dropped radically, number of active users dropped.
What did NOT drop was the number of votes cast.
"So what?" you might be asking.
Well, that simple statistic points to the likelihood that the vast majority of voting on Steemit is done by bots, not by human beings. Which also means the vast majority of curation on Steemit is done by bots, not by human beings.
Community Building
Now, I'm not going to get into the pros and cons of bots, nor why they are good or bad... nor is this about Steemit, in particular-- but I wanted to pause and consider how COMMUNITIES are built.
Connections need a solid anchor...
Shortest possible version: Communities are built by PEOPLE. Not by technology, code or bots. The "tech" is simply a tool used by PEOPLE.
I'm not going to deny that the tech can be used by people to improve a community... the problem arises when we go down a road where we start substituting technology for people, especially in subjective areas like interpersonal dynamics and creative expression-- including art.
I keep thinking of the stereotypical meme of a college lecture hall, in which the professor's laptop is running a multimedia presentation to a roomful of smartphones, tablets and laptops.
Who's actually learning anything, there?
There's little doubt that technology has done much to improve the human experience, but let us not lose sight of the fact that said experience is-- ultimately-- "organic" and not mechanized. Robots and software may be able to "sort" us by interest and emulate some of what we do... but whether we actually like something-- and like each other, enough to form a community-- still requires the human factor, which tends to be fickle and highly unpredictable.
And-- on a more personal level-- why do we JOIN communities?
The heart of the matter...
Typically, because we are looking for human interaction... not because we are harboring secret passions to be part of a botnet.
When I look around Steemit, I won't argue that many find the rewards "cool," but the most frequently heard refrain is that it's the quality of the interactions and the real friendships people are forming that makes the site stand out. Yes, we may be here for the rewards, but as often as not what keeps us coming back is the fact that Steemit simply offers a better way to do social media.
Let us keep this firmly in mind, next time we're talking to a friend and they ask "So what's this Steemit thing you've become part of?"
Have a beautiful weekend!
DISCUSSION: What is your opinion about the blend of technology and humanity? How do you believe communities and community bonds are formed? Leave a comment and be part of the dialogue!
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Joining communities makes it easy for us to find a fit. Technology and bots play major roles in development, but it is the people who make these technologies thrive. Take for example, @stach, we decided to give the online presence an offline face so people can get a clearer understanding of what it is all about. Good write up.
@ejemai, that's an excellent example of the technology being used to aid the human connections. You are building a community of people in an area of Nigeria... the technology helps the people, it doesn't try to replace the people. Thanks for the thoughtful reply!
This is why I've tried to make engagement in the chats a large part of my steemit activity, because most upvoting is done by bots and the rest is done by people who are looking for upvotes and followers, usually self interest at center stage. Steemit is all set up for awesome community building but without the chats, it's just SEO land.
Honestly, as a creative person with little IRL creative network/community in my current location, steemit and particularly its comments section have been such an exciting discovery for me. I have been constantly surprised and astounded by the level of engagement, respect, openness, creativity, and just "humanity" in the comments on steemit. It is such a different environment compared to what I am used to with conventional social media and internet forums. IMO steemit seems to engender a really healthy combination of community AND "competition", because its foundation incentivizes positive growth in what you AND others create and contribute. A truly symbiotic platform. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it...
Well, this may help you wrap your head around it, some of it is BS! That’s not to say most of it is, I think people generally want to be civil and respectful but get pulled into polarized debates and angered by trolls, and monetization, while it does increase the amount of brown nosing, it also manages to curb a lot of the trolling and baiting, which is very nice for those of us who just want to SHARE rather than convince.
And I appreciate the engagement!
As you pointed out, if it were not for the discussions, this would just be SEO Land. Some (usually techy) type might ask "And what's wrong with that?"
On paper... nothing, EXCEPT for the fact that it's a limiting factor. Steemit would never grow beyond a hard-core center of people with developer and tech experience. Growing the community to become a world-spanning social platform requires people and interaction.
I tend to be a long-term participant. I don't care about the question "Will I make $5 tomorrow?" I care about the question "Will this community still be strong and striving in 2025 so I can be making $5 THEN?"
Haha you remember that!
Sorry for the late reply, too much engagement backlog. ;-P
I also ask the question, will someone who joins up after I did be able to make $5 or will all that potential go to the biggest fish? These questions hurt people’s heads though X-D
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DISCUSSION: What is your opinion about the blend of technology and humanity? How do you believe communities and community bonds are formed? Leave a comment and be part of the dialogue!
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regarding bots: difficult topic, are they necessarily bad? it would be helpful to see how many automated votes a post got. That would it make transparent to the community.
afaik steemit gives more rewards to replies than to votes for posts, and also looks at overall participation. Difficult to automate.
IMO it is difficult to fight bots or automation without damaging potential of a social media platform.
In other words we need to learn to deal with it...
steemit is also rather new and raw, content filtering and recommendation yet completely absent (good, no bubble).
technology is as such is increasing productivity and wealth and is basically good. but at the beginning of a new technology (like crypto) the market is very chaotic and is attracting a lot of different people with a diverse background... (especially if a lot of money can be made quickly).
That is a pattern. First there is anarchy and boundless creativity. Than people (the community) is asking for some rules. And finally state like structures and a culture is established.
It is a reliable pattern. And you can see it happen in here in real-time.
Yes, one of the things I try to remind myself here is that "Steemit is still in Beta." Even Google was in "Beta" for several years before that tag was removed. SO we can expect things to be a little rough around the edges for a while, until site use determines what needs to be adjusted and how.
My biggest convern with bots is that they will have too much influence, eventually rendering the site mostly a niche venue for developers/techies... which means it will have a very finite growth curve. To have broad public appeal, the human factor is extremely important. I spend a lot of time here because I enjoy the interaction and dialogue.
This is amazing! @reddragonfly
I'm in complete agreement with you and really like to read about your thoughts on the matter. I've long thought this and have resisted using bots or any rote method of voting and curating - including streamian. I do think that there may be ways to employ the use of bots in very limited ways but keep up one's relationships here as well. Anyway, thanks for your post, I always enjoy the your blog!