RE: Steem Needs to Go Mainstream! Let’s Bring over 200 Million Meme Lovers Worldwide to Steem! dMania Makes it Possible !!! Together We Can Do This !!!
As much as I love memes, and totally appreciate the amount of work you're putting into this project - it begs the question if memes should be monetarily rewarded from a content standpoint. The beauty of Steemit is that it encourages original content creation. Obviously on a decentralized platform there will be people abusing it - for example, if someone is just posting a music video from a popular band without any sort of original commentary or addition to accompany it, then that's essentially profiting off of someone else's work. They're not adding to the conversation or doing anything original. Does this happen on Steemit? Unfortunately yes, but at least there's an incentive to encourage original work by having the ability to downvote and flag.
So far what you're describing sounds like it's encouraging financial rewards for non-original content. Sorry, but I don't consider a screenshot from a tv show with some funny words typed on it as original content- in fact it's really profiting off of someone else's work in a similar way to what I described above in my example, which should not be encouraged.
By all means, go nuts making memes, but maybe it's worth considering that that sort of fandom should remain on non-rewarding platforms like 9gag so that the blockchain financially encourages more original work.
Just my two cents, and if I'm understanding what you're building incorrectly then please correct me. Ultimately the internet will be the internet and something like this will pop up eventually regardless of what I think, but for the record I disagree with the principle of it.
Like Steemit, dMania is a website and a community for sharing content. If that content is original depends and how you define original content. Most of the content on Steemit isn't original content either. It's some information or media that someone saw, heard or found somewhere on the internet. That's how social media or the whole internet works. If you change that content, is it really original content? Truly original content is rare or doesn't even exist. Every information, picture or video is based on the ideas and work of someone else.
If you post some news from a website or use a picture that you found somewhere for your post, you are essentially profiting off of someone else's work. It isn't possible to reward the original author. That's how the internet works. I think it's important that the creator is rewarded, but shouldn't be the one who shares that content be rewarded too. Too many people here claim that they create original content when all they do is take information and share it.
In my opinion the most important thing is that content is shared. If you create something unique and nobody sees it, it's the worst thing that can happen to the creator. Even worse than plagiarism.
I don't say that reposts or plagiarism are a good thing. But people have to differentiate between plagiarism and sharing. It's only plagiarism if you claim the work of somebody else as your own.
On dMania you are rewarded for sharing, because it is not possible to find out if you are actually the original creator.
For memes plagiarism just doesn't exist. A meme is a joke in form of a picture. Like in real life, you can't claim a joke as your own work. Nobody knows who actually created it. Nobody even cares. The important thing is that the joke is shared and brings fun and joy for everybody else.
The flaw in your logic is that sharing something does not equate to compulsory monetary compensation. There is a difference between a sale and sharing. I'm not necessarily talking about plagiarism.
If I share my lunch with you, do I ask you to pay for half? Maybe. But that's a contract agreed upon by both parties, verbal, informal, or otherwise.
Yeah, sharing is great, but I don't agree that people should be financially compensated for sharing work that isn't created by themselves. At least not without having explicit permission from the original content creator.
For example, you can promote this practice on Steemit by only upvoting posts where the author is also the artist or creator of that content. If there's great content already made and you want to share it, resteem it.
The fact that people are abusing Steemit in this way already is irrelevant to my initial point: Steemit already has a mechanism in place to devalue posts like this, which is an incentive for people to use it. Whether or not people do, is another conversation.
To rephrase my initial point in the form of a question: How does creating a whole platform for people to make money off of memes benefit society? What kind of a culture are you promoting? Even if you don't know who made the meme, what gives you the right to make money off of it instead?
...If the point is just to have fun as you say, then leave it on 9Gag and let everyone have fun - that's not the problem here. The problem is that the second you introduce monetary (or other) compensation for fun that relies on other people's work it becomes a whole new ball game and is asking for trouble in the long run.
I can't stop the internet obviously (and nor do I want to) - I'm only bringing up this argument for the sake of food for thought.
Whilst I respectfully agree with some things you are saying , it can also be easily argued that many steem users are posting videos and writing content that is borrowed , edited , altered and claimed as original . whilst steem posting original stuff is awesome , I can see so much stuff here that is just useless !!! ( with respect ) . People post pics of their dogs sleeping , their cats , checking in at airports ... that's my gripe with steem . The fact that a steem user with great , great voting power can earn you a lot of money with 1 vote .. is at not fair .. the content may be of poor quality but a fat , influential voter can make you more money . Steemit in that sense is not fair .. i have also seen many people ask for steem ( money ) so that they can upvote your posts as they have huge steem power .. I think for now steem is not fair from that point of view and IMO a vote is a vote .., your vote shouldn't wield greater power than another person ..... just like any voting system !! Thanks
yeah, totally - it sounds like you're saying exactly what I'm saying. My point however is that Steemit has a mechanism to combat that behaviour (downvotes, flagging), whilst dMedia seems to be only for promoting that behaviour - the nature of memes is inherently unoriginal. That's the point.
Programmers can choose to not create additional apps and platforms which encourage rewarding unoriginal content. This is why I bring this opinion up.
I think posting memes is perfectly OK, most people add there own captions to images provided on a site to create memes, or even upload their own images to caption and share. I think this is perfectly fair to do, and is a more simple way to reward those who love making/ viewing memes. It's kind of similar to music in that a lot of music contains samples and is intact based upon music rhythms from years ago...is it still original, it's debatable of course.