Urdu community Contest / S2W1 – Steemit Enagement Challenge | The Dichotomy of Steemit and Other Social Media Platforms by @phlexygee

Hello lovely people of this great community #urducommunity. I trust all is well with you in your respective residents. In fact I am very pleased with the opportunity offered by the authorities of the community for us to share our views on Steemit in relation to other social media platforms.

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Write about the social media you use the most daily and why is it beneficial for you or not?

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Social Media platforms are virtual communities or networks that connect people from all spheres of life, by then, the social media platform I often use daily is WhatsApp, and below are more details of the social media platform.

About WhatsApp (What's up)

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source

WhatsApp as most of as are familiar with, is a social media platform that emerged as an alternative to SMS, and it was introduced in 2009 by Jan Koum and Brian Acton who were previously employees at Yahoo for 20 years, and later bought in 2014 by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg at a price of $19 billion.

WhatsApp is currently ranked third among all social media platforms, and has over 2 billion users, whereby it enables these users to send and receive different forms of messages and media files such as text, photos, videos, documents, and location, in addition to voice and video calls with data charges, although free.

Just like other social media platforms, WhatsApp is free and easy to use, whiles it offers simple, secure, reliable messaging and calling features through end-to-end encryption.

WhatsApp operates on iOS, Android, kaiOS and MacOS.

Why is it beneficial for you or not?

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WhatsApp is beneficial to me simply because it enables me to easily connect with my family and friends around the world, including the ones I have met on Steemit by just adding their contacts to my phone.

Most importantly, WhatsApp permits me to send and receive variety of media files from people, when the need arises. With WhatsApp I am able to send images, videos, audio, PDF and document files together with making online voice and video calls with family and friends which cost less data charges.

In fact with even 2mb of data I am able to send and receive some limited number of messages and files which is really good, since it doesn't demand much data bundle.

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Why do you think spending more time on steemit than on other social media platforms can help you grow in life and benefits your life?

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With no doubt, I think spending more time on Steemit over other social media platforms has much potential to put one's life into a good shape.

Steemit has already done more good to me than harm in terms of knowledge, capital, and friendships, and with this I think spending more quality time on Steemit instead of other social media platforms will positively contribute to my life as well as personal growth, this is because the Steemit platform has some unique qualities that other social media platforms lack, such as gaining some level of wealth through curation rewards.
There are various communities and scholars of different fields who deliver relevant contents related to areas such as crypto, school subjects, writing, coding (markdowns), content etiquettes, culture and life exploration
to shape the overall life of steemians, which is not the case of the other social media platforms because most of them lay much emphasis on entertainment and flashy lifestyle.

In a nutshell, I think me spending more time on Steemit over the other social media platforms can help to broaden my horizon, whiles I accumulate some capital and spend less, since there's less pressure of luxurious lifestyle on Steemit, the making of positive friends is of no exception, and all will in turn contribute positively to my overall growth and development in life.

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In the end compare Steemit with other social media platforms by talking about their advantages and disadvantages, and give examples from your personal experience.

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Here comes my unbias comparison of Steemit with other social media platforms with regard to their merits and demerits.

Advantages of Steemit

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1. It is an avenue to gain knowledge; steemit offers it users an avenue to gain knowledge from the various fields of each other, which is fueled with the curation feature. As said earlier pondered on, Steemit has many advantages to its users and I can use myself as example because with the platform I have to gained knowledge in crypto, coding, content etiquette and my writing skills has improved together with other aspects of me.

2. Users get the opportunity to make friends with people of similar interests from different walks of life. On Steemit I have had numerous friends from different countries who have become like a family to me that no other social media platform has offered me, although they can.

3. All steemians stand the chance to tap into the Steemit reward pool, which serves as a financial support. No social media platform offers it users with pleasing rewards for quality content delivery as Steemit. Over here, my Steemit Wallet is my testimony.

4. The platform is decentralized, therefore users get the free will to operate on the platform without restrictions from a central body.

5. Steemit keeps users records for life; due to the Steem blockchain that the platform is built on, all messages and content that are posted on the platform are somehow immutable, therefore users get in contact with their publications without loosing them, unlike social media platforms like WhatsApp whereby users lose relevant messages and files due to uninstallation, or being deleted by senders. Again, Steemit record the dates by which users joined the platform, but a platform like WhatsApp doesn't take into account of that, although it is necessary.

6. Steemians are free from mandatory platform updates; most of the social media platforms aside Steemit requires their users to update the platforms on timely basics, whiles users who look down upon those updates are left behind.

7. Everlasting account; all steemians have their accounts for life without being tampered or removed by a central authority as a result of inactiveness, so far as they still have in possession of their account keys. I have seen a couple of Telegram accounts that have been deleted by Telegram due to their inactiveness on the platform for a maximum of one year period of time, conversely, there's no account deactivation on Steemit as a result of inactiveness. A user can stay offline for any period of time and bounce back whenever the need arises, if only the account keys are with him or her.

Disadvantages

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1. The platform is not user-friendly to newbies; Steemit demands more from it users which makes it unfriendly to some users especially the newbies, therefore new users need mentors before they can thrive on the platform.

2. It is not easily accessible; unlike the other social media platforms which are popular and easily accessible from different app stores, Steemit is some kind of low key platform that lacks an official app, of which only few people around the world know about.

3. The platform sometimes goes down without any pre-information to its users; in times of site maintenance and other factors that leads to short period shutdowns, users are left out with no clue of the current happenings, which leads to some level of panic. An example of such moments is displayed beneath.
   source

4. Users are prone to hackers just like the other social media platforms, but with Steemit users hardwork earned funds are stolen on successful hacks. There are instances where users accounts have been hacked leaving them in pain, not just because of the accounts, but the funds in the wallets.

5. There is a complicated mode of account recovery in case users want to recover their stolen accounts, whiles it is impossible for users to access their accounts after loosing keys.

Advantages of Other Social Media Platforms.

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1. User-friendly; aside Steemit, all social media platforms I have used are user-friendly to new users. Social Media platforms such as WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook are user-friendly to the extent that even kids are able to access them without no complications.

2. Fast operating speed; other social media platforms such as Telegram, Twitter and Facebook are more faster in terms of operations. Updating, sending and receiving of messages and files on these non-blockchain platforms is fast.

3. Users are updated or informed on issues related to the platforms within a period of time, either on the same channel or through different channel. An example is what happened with the down time of WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram on the 4th of October, 2021 due to a major outage that took place for some hours.

4. They are easily accessible; the other social media platforms are easily accessed by users, since most of them have user-friendly apps that can be downloaded in the various app stores. I can say, I easily download most of the social media platforms from Google play store with my Android.

5. Scammers and fraudulent activities are tracked down by the central authorities of such platforms when noticed, since most of them are centralized in nature. Suspicious users are blocked from accessing most of those platforms.

6. Most of those platforms offer flexible and swift account recovery, in case users forget their account passwords.

Disadvantages

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1. Unlike Steemit, most of these other social media platforms are centralized, which puts some level of restrictions on the operations of their users.

2. There are a lot of scam and fraudulent activities on most of those other social media platforms, due to their easy accessibility and popularity. I have received scam messages from random users of the other social media platforms that I use, but unfortunately for them, I don't cope, since I know their mission upon checking their message.

3. Vast portion of those social media platforms occupies users storage with the app installation files and some other irrelevant files. I will use my WhatsApp as example, the app has taken more than 2 gb of my total phone storage, meanwhile Steemit has taken nothing.

4. High probability of account deactivation by most of these platforms authorities in case of inactiveness or violation of terms and conditions by users.

_{screenshot from my Telegram app}

A practical example of such platforms is Telegram, as seen from the image above, as some friends of mine have lost their accounts due to their inactiveness for awhile.

Conclusion

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The above submissions are based on my personal experience on Steemit and other social media platforms, but against all odds and not being partial, I will submit that Steemit is the best social media platform that I have come across so far.
A platform full of knowledge and wealth, wow 🤗

Steem to the moon 🚀

I hereby invite @gentles, @pandev and @wealthmary to this interesting contest.
Thank you for glancing through my article.