Content-Type Value and Reward DiscussionsteemCreated with Sketch.

in #content7 years ago (edited)

Can we separate post rewards on Steemit by content type that reflects a value of time, effort, energy, work and labor to create?

Or does each content type benefit more by being it's own platform, subchain or token?

Or is there a better option?

And can some content be prevented from being here? Is child abuse allowed? Is that censorship? Sex trafficking transactions? Anything and everything? Let's be real, censorship is a realistic part of life. Those who blindly follow maxims of complete freedom of every and any action no matter how immoral it is are not living in a sane worldview.

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But aside from that argument to demonstrate how censorship is valid in life, and how @dantheman even made a well structured post on the validity of censorship, there is always the issue of how different content is rewarded in this new economic model where no one is actually paying for anything themselves. It's a skewed consumer model that doesn't represent the way our economic reality functions correctly.

It's not causally reciprocal from a buyer to a seller to mitigate and regulate the causal free market forces. You're not putting you're own money into something. There is no loss. There is no need to be conscious, aware and focus on quality at all. All the payout comes froma reward pool that you didn't even have to pay into to generate. As such, Steemit is not a free market economic model, despite having similarities and trying to emulate the behavior.

Different content has different markets and has different value. Not the same criteria for valuation.

You don't value an apple product and marketplace with that of a Ferrari and marketplace. There is a more time, effort, energy, work and labor put into creating one than the other.

Some people put much more work, time, energy, effort, and labor to create real world valuable content that didn't exist before. Other people don't, or can't, and may expect to get, or are getting, the same or more valuations or rewards on posts that don't require doing much work other than copy/pasting a link, text, pictures, audio, video, etc. The former creates content through time and labor of their own, like in real life, while the latter but barely any time or effort to post a link or copy/paste something, and expects to get the same rewards, or doesn't, but is rewarded by those who prefer and promote this type of content.

All content has some form of value, granted, but there is a reality of time, energy and work put into creating something of value no matter the subjective value people can have on the content itself. This has a weight factor in considering how rewards are handled in an economic model not based on real-world causal payment from people's own pockets.

The real world has people pay themselves for content they value. Steem/Steemit rewards posts from a reward pool, not from people's own pockets who upvote. When all types of "work" are in one single reward pool that no one had to pay into, that no one is paying from their pockets to lose anything on any purchase or vote they cast, then it's highly subject to influence and manipulations. Those who put in real work to create something, real content, are less rewarded compared to those who simply share what the content creators create.

Usually in reality, people will value quality content over time. Why?

For one (1), they are paying for it themselves, they want the most value for their dollar spent. But in Steemit, no one is actually spending anything of their own. This incentive to promote quality with their own money, is lost on people as they strive for personal monetary gain through gaming the system, many taking and not giving back much quality to help the platform grow as something of quality that isn't found elsewhere. Their goal and focus is not on the long term success of Steemit based on a quality content platform, where you can get unique content to give value to Steemit itself as a content platform to get things. Steemit can also have links to other information sure, but not valued at the same reward for its content type.

Rewarding people who make content compared to rewarding people who share content.

Secondly (2), people value quality over time because this quality content/information lasts as important and valued over time, while other information is fleeting and only relevant to a limited period of time where its frequency of consumption is dictated by it's popularity. This is what will make Steemit grow and last over time. Quality content. Facebook and Twitter are not going to last as the platforms they are if something better comes along, but has different platforms that can interconnect while keeping each content type more visible and accessible for each audience type.

The focus away from quality content that would reflect the overall quality of Steemit to attract future people over time, seems to be driven by the desire for a quantity of people to come in regardless of the quality they bring to Steemit and reflect for the platform, this ranges from simple links and copy/paste, to gambling and pornography.

People are putting the focus on Steemit succeeding through popularity by any means and representing anything, rather than succeeding by quality and presenting a quality image for future members and investors. Facebook, and other socially "reputable" sites would not have the success they do in the mainstream if they simply adopted anything and everything in the world because of some blind naive focus and appeal to censorship freedom. And you're not going to get the majority of people to leave those places like FB if you cater to these low quality vices simply because your focus is on money or quantity of people joining the platform early on.

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I want quality growth, even if its slow at first. I want a quality reputation for Steemit. That the success and future I want for Steemit.

What we feed, is what will grow.

Build it, and they will come. Build quality, and you get more quality. Build low quality, and you get more low quality. Quality in, quality out. Garbage in, garbage out.

If we keep rewards the same for all content types, and some types are what get most of the rewards, like for simple rehashing of links, sports betting, etc., then that's what the platform will become more of. Those with the SteemPower fuel the success of content types.

What do you think? How do we change this? Where do we all want to go?


Thank you for your time and attention! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. Take care. Peace.

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@krnel
2016-12-05, 10:52am

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I think the incentive to vote for posts which people know will become valuable is strong like Curie posts, Steemsports posts, etc. When we add to that the incentive to be rewarded via your vote beyond curation rewards (as Steemsports does), it creates a very interesting motivation to keep voting on those types of posts. Should something be done about it on the blockchain level? Maybe. At the same time, the community might respond and stop voting on those posts if they feel the rewards aren't being distributed in a manner they like. They could also encourage others to vote as they do.

The interesting thing about the economics of this whole thing is there are people who really are paying for it all. Investors are buying tens of thousands of dollars of STEEM and SBD every week (see the exchange transfer reports I've been creating). The question we might ask is, are the people paying for the value here okay with it? If so, what voice should those have who are not paying for value and why?

The interesting thing about the economics of this whole thing is there are people who really are paying for it all. Investors are buying tens of thousands of dollars of STEEM and SBD every week

You've hit the proverbial nail right on the head. These are the people who are paying for the 'free' rewards. Most of them are speculators buying both up for the usual reasons, but some of those buying STEEM are essentially buying influence by withdrawing their STEEM & powering-up. I myself fall into the latter category, to a modest extent.

The question we might ask is, are the people paying for the value here okay with it? If so, what voice should those have who are not paying for value and why?

What's interesting about these questions is that they're hard to answer in a cut-and-dried way. Presumably, the buyers who aren't okay with the content will sell and push the price down. But holders, mostso speculators, can sell for a variety of reasons unrelated to Steemit's content or growth. How many times have punters dumped one altcoin simply to chase after another? :)

On the creation/curation side, everyone theoretically should curate with an eye towards growing the value of STEEM. (This is prolly the reason behind the popularity content. An altcoin pump is a lot like the altcoin winning a popularity contest!) But again, the tie is indirect because a) value is subjective b) there's no transmission mechanism specifying what the holders consider valuable content. We're expected to guess.

This indirectness certainly makes for an interesting social experiment!

Except when most people want $$$, and most people decide... then you get most people:

name: I hate most sports .. but steemsports you must ..it is the absolute best way to accumulate STEEM
name: other than getting lucky posting crap

Which demonstrates what I'm talking about. Content creators vs. useless eater. Workers vs. Freeloaders. Some people just want to get free money without doing anything but pick a team or do some clicks. I don't want Steemit to cater to these people, even if they come in in droves and make up the majority of the platform. That is a dead platform of leeches siphoning everything while the people who work to create content try to keep it afloat and get less potential rewards overall as more of these other posts are rewarded.

I agree to some extent, but ask you to consider this free-loading like Bitcoin mining. The difference is that more people can get involved. As people learn that the tokens have value they will start to use them as currency.

Bootstrapping a currency that is widely accepted is the single biggest product that Steem can produce (in terms of ROI). Rewarding content producers and creating censorship free discussion helps bring people into the currency.

If Steem had facebook's user base the Steem token would be a global currency larger than most countries and it would trade at market caps well in excess of facebook.

Yeah, I get that, and recall it from the "master plan" for world domination. More people get involved, but to what extent. People also use Facebook as a chat replacement to what used to be popular like AOL, ICQ, MSNMessenger, and skype still is. That feature allows people to interconnect on anything, regardless of any content on the platform. If bootstrapping goes with the popularity of some content for the sake of popularity alone, when does it change to a more quality focus instead of a quantity focus?

But "people who work to create content" don't create the exchange value of STEEM or SBD. Investors do. By your logic, I could argue all the content creators are "free loaders" also, right?

My point is, it's not so black and white. Value is subjective. "I don't want Steemit to..." is just your opinion among many. Your opinion (or mine, or anyone's) is not law. That said, we should keep expressing our opinions and working to influence others of our reason and logic, especially if we want to support the long-term value of Steemit.

But they do. Imagine Steemit, the "whatever" platform, with no content. Where is the value? What is the backing that gives Steemit any real world value then? Nothing. Just like any other shitcoin. I have talked about how Steemit actually has real world value because of the content creators: STEEM Has Real Value - STEEM is the Most Valuable Cryptocurrency, People Just Don't Know it Yet

A cryptocurrency with no investors is also worth nothing. Again, it's not black and white. I agree, the content creates value which then interests investors and users.

From your post:

Steemit is a free market. We, the content creators, determine what it will become.

Yes... but I also think the investors play a larger role than the content creators. If they aren't propping up the price of STEEM or SBD, then changes will be made.

Also:

Don't get too entitled about what you think you "deserve", and take out your frustration on those who didn't recognize your work. Entitlement is big problem these days...

While I agree with your perspectives on the importance of truth and morality and great content here, I also recognize how difficult defining universals within the context of humanity is. My impression of your post here seemed to contradict what you said early in that some things really could be more "deserving" than others, but I see that as subjective.

As an example, some think it's "true" that pornography is immoral and bad. Others argue it's not immoral if there are no real victims and it's done voluntarily. If we then try to demonstrate the "truths" here, we run into problems of understanding how much of our culture influences our systems for measuring good and bad. Maybe the bad parts of pornography actually come from twisted perspectives in our culture about the human body and human sexuality?

Either way, I commend your efforts to call others to a higher level of valuable content here. I also want to caution against telling others what they value is objectively not valuable. If they value it, then clearly it is valuable to them, even if, over the long term, it's not beneficial.

grandpere hit the nail on the head...this seems like a popularity contest run by whales and bots (if it were my platform, bots would be banned). I read your articles and they seem of the highest quality. I try to write at least one post a day and so far the ones that took the least thought and rate lowest on my "value scale" seem to have been the most popular (with one exception). Like you say, quality in, quality out. Time will tell...Steemit will either become a beacon of critical thinking, or just another garbage dump.

Yeah, imagine a community of critical thinkers, promoting critical thinking, rewarding critical thinking, popularizing critical thinking, and encouraging others to get into critical thinking. That would be highly valuable success for a platform, at least in the long term, and for serious investors. Look at academia and their selectivity, with all their journals and papers costing so much just to read a few pages. The world of information, and more meaningful academic type of information, is something that attracts some people more than others. So it's not "popular".

Wow...thanks for the depressing news, my friend, now I know I'm never going to be popular! Maybe I'll write about baseball or post a picture of a cat...seems to work on Facebook!

A good analysis @krnel. As for censorship, I'm against it. Steemit on this path will be just like Facebook. Regarding the quality of the posts, we see people here with very original posts and earning pennies, while "celebrities" only copy and paste news from yahoo and earn hundreds of dollars. So I believe that whales and witnesses should have clear criteria and attention to that.

Absolutely: "Those with the SteemPower fuel the success of content types."

But censorship is not an argument for or against something being what a community wants to support or allow. Communities censor things, no problem. Theres a big difference between behavior and information censorship.

Censorship of things in life in common place. We censor behavior. We are not talking about information here. This isn't mainstream media censoring news or inromation, or wikipedia doing the same. There is a big different between freedom of all information on a platform vs. censorship of information, and the issue at hand, of freedom of all behavior to be seen on a site vs. censorship of having it seen, or even allowing that behavior on the site. It's about where is Steemit headed. Another platform for the majority of people, based on information, or a platform for anyone who like porn, gambling and others vices that keep most people away.

porn and drug dealers didn't stop the internet. Nor, apparently, do the sick people who do sick things jump on the internet, and steem is loads more transparent.

I think you are on a crusade and if you can't handle that the tech used here might be used by bad people, I can direct you to other quite popular venues where pieces of metal are considered to be devils enchanting good people to murder.

censorship has nothing to do with actual bad things being done. If people post proof of their evil here, how is this logical? number one rule of badness is don't get caught. when people do bad things, someones rights are stolen.

Filtering controlled by you is your business. But filter for you controlled by me? You know, I really hate sexy girl selfies. Also I hate people apologising for censorship and comparing censorship to justice, and apologising for customary "crimes" like me smoking weed in my room and me not raping babies... You know that was not a radical claim only 20 years ago in public opinion. What about the muslim and jew custom of mutilating boy's private parts before they can decide?

It is very brave to set up a forum where nobody can be silenced. Your sentiments are shameful.

It's about the what the image and reputation the community wants to develop going forward and growing towards. Feed it, and it grows. Then an image sticks, even after it changes as well, if Steemit changes later.

You claiming that my sentiments are shameful, can also be said about you, trying to shame me for saying what I said. LOL. Nice try. Especially trying to fallaciously frame it as a straw man "where nobody can be silenced"...LOL. I'm not arguing for that censorship of information. I'm talking about specific behavior of content creation. Porn, and sports betting, isn't really information. Not wanting that on Steemit is not "silencing" information or people. It's saying to go make your money somewhere else.

You also can't just claim something should be part of a community, based on an alleged defense of "censorship". Then you sound like an apologist who uses censorship to defend something on the grounds of censorship. Who's shameful now? J/k. :P You sound more upset than me, because I speak out about this. Sheesh. You won't guilt trip me with BS.

Are you sure you're not confounding censorship and flagging? I've been watching the alt-Right for some time, but I've been hesitant to evangelize therein even though they're the crew that would like a censorship-resistant platform.

I'm hesitant because I assume that some of their more edgy stuff would get flagged. To be frank, I can see why the edgier stuff would be flagged. As a platform, Steemit is censorship resistant. But as a community with real people, we've got whales & such who serve as benevolent guardians (if you will.) They'll flag offensive stuff; at least, I assume they will. Hence my hesitancy.

Speaking of flags, that's a technically feasible way of implementing an NSFW-type policy. Stuff tagged "NSFW" gets assigned a new, special flag that doesn't penalize the poster but hides the post in the same way that regular flagging does. Implementing it this way provides a stick-based incentive to hew to the NSFW policy: "Sequester it on your own, or pay the penalty of a real flagging [and real downvotes for breaking the rule]."

We'll work this issue out.

jag vill ha belöning

You are right and your wrong. Even in the white paper, the economics of the posts is based upon "popularity", not quality. I do agree with you, because of opportunity costs.

The problem is that popularity is determined by whales and bots with the bandwagon effect and Panurge sheep. It's a game? Quality does not matter, just $$$? And who will win the most? Is this how to develop a product for the long term?

Yeah, I'm looking at the long term, quality, success, where people will want to come here because it will stand for something that represents quality, with a good reputation. Not a sleezebag gambling porn site.

I can see your position, though I wasn't saying we have to do or not do what the WhitePaper says in this case. I'm more talking about logical reality of where we want to go and what actually is better for Steemit's success and future.

But I have actually argued for quality from the WhitePaper with respect to value: Steemit Succeeds if We Make it Succeed - Analysis to Help Yourself and Steemit Grow in Quality

I'm not arguing with your premise. I want quality (my quality-subjective)! The problem steems ;) from the curation sides economic decisions. The way I see it going is that people curation is going to go to bots curation. May the bot wars begin.

If you can partition the market into sub-markets that may solve for junk content (for some people this is quality content). I believe moving content off the block chain and into other side-chains would create the partitioning.

As long as content does not break any laws then i think it's ok to post. So that's child abuse and a bunch of other despicable interests out. Everything else simply needs it's proper place.....Steemit will be a weave of information flows with some strands being larger than others.

I would say the "law" isn't the factor for what a community wants. Cannabis is safe, can bused to build, for fuel, for paper, clothes, and more, and I would say growing and selling it is a great thing. But since it's "illegal", we censor ourselves from selling "illegal" things even though they are beneficial. I'm speaking of behavior the community wants to support overall that we feed and grow. Information is different from behavior.

I agree that the law is not the perfect arbiter of what is right and wrong...I believe all drugs should be decriminalised and therefore would not object to content with a drug related subject matter being on Steemit. On the other hand, I would object to any content that celebrates and indulges child abuse. I think genital mutilation before an individual is capable of making a choice is wrong, but clearly there are communities around the world who would disagree with me. If such material were to appear, I would either have to avoid it or enter into a debate in the hope of changing opinions. What I certainly don't want is for there to be a censorship creep where other people are deciding what I can and can't see....i'll make that choice for myself. That is easy to say until there is a disagreement about where that line is. If I was the only person on the planet who found acting on pedophilia wrong, would i be wrong? What if everyone had been indoctrinated? We all think we're right until we're proven or convinced that we're wrong. Perhaps the only way to settle the discussion would be to have steemians vote. We can then get a measure of the composition of our community. If 95% of us don't want to see posts that celebrate child abuse, then if it makes it onto the blockchain, the devs can inhibit it or our community curation can make it disappear. If 50% of us don't want to see consenting adults doing a porno, then 50% do so we need to accommodate that kind of material in a way where the 50% that don't like it can avoid it relatively easily. There is so little black and white but we must acknowledge who we are as a global society....different sexes, religions, cultures, education status, wealth, health, nations, knowledge.....some of it is ugly. Let's take a look at all of it....it's who we are and see what we can do to remove the lies and corruption and see where we are after that.

Follow us. We're already following you, resteeming some of your material and have started promoting it on our demo site. Greater things to come!

I strongly agree with your views on quality. I have suggested the use of hierarchical tags a while ago, and this could be enriched by a compulsory tag indicating what type of content (simple share of known information or creative content). By having a tree like ontological classification such a quality stratification could also be incorporated.

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