Content churning is the worst way to get popular on STEEM. HAVE YOU SEEN IT? I explain.
When North America goes to sleep this place gets flooded with garbage content during the night.
WHY?
There are a lot of countries like Indonesia, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam, and many more...
These people have heard about STEEM, and some of their english writing skills are subpar. However, making even just $5 or $10 a week can make a huge difference in their household budget.
GROUP A
- So many of them will grab content from the internet (news articles, other blogs) and plagiarize it and re-upload it to steem...
Then there is the other side of the coin.
GROUP B
- Those that can write english that is basic and understandable. Many of these people will write simple blogs of recipes, pictures of their food, pictures of their friends. These blog entries are often very short and simple with not a lot of real value or content. It's just "content"
Now when you have 500 people from these non-english speaking countries uploading content non-stop during the night, the "new" or "created" feed starts pumping... Just hit reload every 3 seconds, and you get 5 new posts.
You can actually feel the load put on our witness nodes in your mind as they struggle to save all of this data from the steem blockchain in a timely fashion.
It is so out of control it seems funny at first.
(scroll, scroll, scroll down the new post feed)
There's a junk post no one will care about. Oh wait, there's another.
Ha ha, that's the 3rd time I've seen that exact news story article copy/pasted in the last 15 minutes.
Oh! Stir fry for dinner. Looks good
Oh! You had Stir fry for dinner too? I see
Oh wait, so did you .... you're eating stir fry too? That's what 3 people sharing their stir fry dinner on steem EVERY 10 minutes?
STEEM is about freedom of expression, and it's not easily censored, I understand that....
STEEM for a lot of people (like a TON) in poorer countries, is a way to increase their weekly salary by $5 or $10 which could mean whether or not their family eats well that week.
I don't fault anyone.
...but I'm a realist at times.
Now here's where it gets worse......
....
North America wakes up, and gets on here, and starts churning their own content too. They don't want $5 a week, they want at least $50/week.
A lot of this content by North Americans is about complaining about the price of STEEM, what's wrong with steem, or why they can't get followers.
...and then they too....
Write their own version of an article (The same one that was posted 3 times word-for-word) again, and again. Hey everyone! Did you hear what trump just tweeted? (Yes we did, about 50x now)
They share their own recipes and what they had for dinner.
So everyday, when this 12 hour side of the world is awake, they do it. After they go to bed, the other 12 hour side of the world is awake and does it too.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, try this tonight around:
- 1am UTC
- 4am EST
- 3am CST
- 1am PST
Wake up, clear the dust out of your eyes. Hop on STEEM and look under the new tag. Then hit reload/refresh once every 3 to 5 seconds and watch the articles being broadcast out. The junk will become obvious.
...but this junk is similar to more "advanced" junk that North Americans write too.
- The non-english speakers are happy with an extra $5/week earned.
- The english speakers want at least $50/week earned
It's the same content churning, for similar reasons. We don't care what we write, we just want votes and money!
What is the solution?
I think I have one in my next blog article, but you'll have to keep checking back, or follow me if you're interested.
I make a habit of going through new #introduceyourself posts, and I can tell you that I've seen patterns on there as well. There are a ton of garbage empty accounts being made all over the globe. I strongly suspect a lot of the new account posts are not even real people. The intro post is probably being generated by a bot. Perhaps they think the intro post gives the account more legitimacy. Then later it gets used in upvote bot scams. Either way though, the system is broken as it is.
I get your point, you don't mention there are a lot of countries in America (the Americas) that also are happy with additional 5$ a week, same in some Europe countries, and Africa that share similar time with Europe.
You are right, thank you for mentioning it.
What time of the day do the 'Hi..i just follow and upvote you...please follow and upvote me', comments come it?
....around the same times I mentioned the most.
hhhh you are totally right. Unfortunately thats whats going on here so you need to hunt the great content :)
Great job. Keep it up
i agree with you hanen. unfortunately not all of us has the time to "hunt" for great content. and its rather disheartening knowing that you spent so much time on your piece but you know you have to fight for exposure with the other bloggers who doesnt seem to care much about what they put in it. they would rather go for quantity over quality. and its hurting the community as a whole. now im not saying that my blogs are great or anything, but i want those posts that are valuable especially those made by minnows and newcomers to receive credit for their work.
Yeah, I'm a night owl so I see this. I have been tempted to churn at times (and prob could just posting price chart analysis on steem that is not necessary daily as the price hasn't had much to talk about).
Instead I pump out 1 post daily that is part of series of informative posts as my happy medium.
As for the third world countries, so to speak. Even though I am not a fan of the churning, I can understand their mindset and emotional state. If churning out a bunch of nonsense posts can make me the $5 to feed my family how can I even hate on them for that.
On the flipside, such FB types posts may not exactly help steemit.
Also, love the ending of your post. Hell of a hook and looking forward to you solution idea ;-)
I am not sure what the solution is, but I am totally aware of the pattern you describe, as I often don't have time to blog till right before I go to bed (11:00pm US Pacific time) and the churning has already begun.
In the end, maybe it's a question of who's here just for the money, and who's here to create social content... as a result of which money may (or may not) flow.
Sometimes the new section has some decent articles, good if you want to help out others if their content is at least decent, or they are trying.
But there are so many poor blogs and you mostly stick to your followed people.
I've seen a guy on here openly steal articles from www.zerohedge.com. He's not associated with that site in any way. He does a copy/paste of articles without adding any ideas of his own. Not a single original thought. It's an openly flagrant copyright infringement.
At least the stir fry folks in the Pacific Rim are posting pictures of meals that they actually cooked. LOL The only thing I can think of is forming a club of high rep enforcers who target their downvotes one guy at a time.
I look forward to seeing your propsed solution.
That's why I (almost) never check the new section. I did that a couple of times in the past trying to curate and offer people which have low reputation my experience, advices and some support, but proved to be a lose of time... I'm sorry if someone thinks that I am wrong but this is how ot felt for me trying to do that. I am sorry that STEEM has to support all this content that nobody will read again not even once like: Look, last year I had eatean stir fry or Three months ago Trump twited... and lots of these. This is just the bad side of STEEM :D
I agree with you. And I view curation as a process where the best writers will "bubble up" through the ranks and get more reputation as more people discover them and enjoy their work. That said, there are going to be a lot of poor writers and even bottom feeders at the lower rep range who will have a difficult time making progress (because no one values their stir fry of the day). And they will hopefully give up in frustration.
totally agree bro.. there are a lot of people who post copy-pasted stuff or "low-value" piece that floods the feed all the time. its pretty unfair for those who took the time to make posts that are valuable only to have their work dragged down to the bottomless pit because of all those "low-value" posts in a matter of seconds. i look forward to your next post regarding your solution to this problem bro! cheers! :)