About the importance of reshares and the problem with reshares.

Reshare - a strange concept when seen from outside the mental bubble called the internet. Internally, in the belly of the social media leviathans it is like vital bacteria. It rearranges, distribute, sorts and moves the millions of stray-thoughts, cats, subtle wisdoms and blatant stupidities. Reshares are an important component in the digestion-system of any social media.

1. On a place like facebook it is an important indicator for the evil algorithm.
2. In a federated network like Diaspora, Friendica or Mastodon, it is vital for the federation between servers.
3. In a block-chain network like Steemit it is a way to promote quality, which is a very important part of a blogging platform

Unfortunately reshares often have been treated a bit step-motherly, partly due to design-flaws in the different platforms and partly because they can be annoying as hell.

The thing is they are annoying for slightly different reasons in the different networks, but they are treated in the same way.

1. Facebook is just annoying in general. Their algorithm is a piece of crap and nobody really knows how it works. You reshare a picture of your nephew and it is not shown in your mothers feed... Crazy things go viral - good things don't - but the number of reshares is an important part of this mess... and then the reshares fill up your, pretty but false profile and you will only reshare things that make you yourself look good... (it's free game stereotyping Facebook user in'it?)

2. On the federated networks like Mastodon or Diaspora nothing would work without reshares. When a user reshares something he brings the post out to new users on other servers that might not have registered the post. You can really use the bacteria-metaphor here. On the other hand with a completely chronological and algorithmfree feed you will get the same lousy kitten like five times in a row when the cat-people you follow instantly reshares it. For that reason I once proposed The Great Diaspora Treasure Hunt. Better to go back in time and reshare worthy posts to the newly arrived servers.

3. On Steemit reshares come up in the feed of the people who follows you and by resharing a person who just joined Steemit you can introduce him or her to your 675 followers. It is a way where you can help boost the best posts and thereby improve the quality of the whole site. Sometimes I have found a great profile I had overlooked simply because of a reshare. The problem is that the more you reshare the harder it is to find your posts on your own blog. I have made quite a few reshares lately to promote some of the new comics and artists and others Iike and I can't even find my own posts when I look at my blog.

Nobody can imagine that they could make Facebook do anything the users asked, but there has been talks on Diaspora to make the site show you one reshare only once.

Steemit would be highly improved if you could toggle reshares on/off on the blog-pages. The main period of time where the reshare means anything is the week where you can vote for it.

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