DTube Monetization Isn't Scalable: 1 Idea On How We Can Fix It
This video was originally posted to Utopian as a suggestion, and included more details in written form. I simply wanted to syndicate to DTube, and this was the best way to do so. Check out that article for the full take on how this voting system could work.
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(Apologies for the repost, but the original was broken on DTube so I chose to reupload it)
I’ll be posting more articles and videos about this and other related topics often. And if you want more of my thoughts now, check out this video about Privacy on Steem/Steemit that I made a few days ago:
Yes, it is technically an oligarchy. That's the way the blockchain works. More egalitarian systems would always result in users creating multiple fake accounts (probably with bots) to get an unfair advantage. We honestly don't plan to change the way upvotes monetization works. SMTs can't really change that, it's just the original distribution that will be different.
It's a fair concern regarding the fake accounts, but I imagine there must be some safeguards that could be implemented to stop view spamming, either from 1 account (only 1 view/day counts) or perhaps reviewing massive viewcount spikes in the ways that YouTube used to monitor that (remember the 301 View count "glitch". That was both an attempt to sync servers internationally to give accurate views on new videos, as well as monitoring for fraud). I think a huge benefit of the Steem Rewards system is the 7 day payout. While YouTube stops monetizing videos when they get flagged, on Steem, if a user is clearly in violation of TOS (view spamming, copyright violations, etc) then one could retroactively take back the earnings on that post within that 7 day window.
I also just think that, while there will be some spamming (thinking back to old MySpace view bots my friends ran on their bands pages) once you get near the scale of YouTube, the real people watching content will far outnumber fake accounts, and there will be clear correlations between Subscriber base and average view counts over time. So anomalies would be much easier to spot with larger data sets.
At any rate, I do think putting a floor on earnings based on views or upvotes (total number vs value) would not only give Creators more security, but also relieve the pressure from the whales to upvote content.