RE: PSA: You Are Wasting Resources By Voting Before 15 Minutes + Changes in Resource Credit Costs
Companies like Facebook spy on everything you do and you are not getting a free service there.
As someone who has made a few bucks off of writing analysis posts on the steem blockchain about the steem blockchain, it's worth pointing out something very important here:
On Facebook, information that you give them describing yourself is part of the package that they sell to advertisers. That's how they keep the lights on, that's how they feed their kids, that is the cost to play the game.
On the steem blockchain, everyone spies on everything you do. Nothing you do is private, everything you do is grist for someone else to make money off of, and we are perfectly happy to in order to write articles which other people enjoy and vote up.
If your objection to companies like Facebook is that someone is profiting off your hard work, recognize that on the steem blockchain lots of people are profiting off your hard work. Curators literally make money off of voting you up and then making sure other people vote you up. Analysts make money off of your aggregate behavior, and sometimes your specific behavior depending on who you are, pulling analytical data together from public blockchain transactions.
On the steem blockchain, everyone profits off you. If you're very lucky, though it's much harder post HF 20, you can profit off of you. But it's not guaranteed.
So let's stop pretending to be outraged that Facebook and Google make their money by spying on you. You don't really care about that. They don't actually make their money by spying on you. They make their money by watching what you do that they can see, and working really hard to find someone that cares. The steem blockchain spies on everything you do and you are not getting a free service there. Other people are profiting off your effort.
And that's okay.
Everything on STEEM is pseudonymous. Unless you give away personal details on your own, the blockchain never asks you for anything. The data mining is done independently by individuals. The blockchain doesn't ask your birthday, location etc and doesn't tag your face on photos and doesn't recommend you friends and other stuff on your feed. STEEM is less invasive on your privacy than Reddit which ask for your E-mail.
STEEM asks for nothing. If you proactively give away information, that's the individual's responsibility. There is also no veil of feigned privacy on STEEM. Nobody guarantees you privacy except for encrypted memos. There are no ads.
Data mining is expensive and there are only very few avenues to profit from activities on STEEM (unless some idiot start publishing their home address and stuff)
There is a massive difference between a product designed specifically for the purpose of data mining and ad selling Vs a product that is immutable and fully transparent distributed ledger which anybody with an internet connection can look up.