It's going to be very revealing to see how an unregulated, uncensored and unmoderated content market and social media platform evolves over time. In the absence of these traditional means of centralized control, how will the decentralized platform police itself? What useful customs and forms of etiquette will organically emerge?

In a way, Steemit is currently moderated, I suppose. Currently the founders and other whales can throw their disproportionate voting power around to help craft a culture that's pleasing to them and that they believe best supports the platform's growth. But, if they are successful in achieving that growth, they will quickly lose control--posts will become too numerous for them to review, and their voting power will be diluted over time. At that point, "the mob" takes over as a moderator of sorts by effectively up voting or down voting content. Given that displeasing the mob can cost one real money in the Steemit system, there will be a definite social incentive to conform to some degree.

Even so, I imagine that, like society, the Steemit culture will eventually fragment into subcultures. People will "find their tribe" of similarly-minded folks who will upvotes their content, and few but trolls will take the time to digest content with which they disagree in order to down vote it or comment against it.

In any event, this is an incredibly fascinating experiment and I'm THRILLED to have gotten on as close to the ground floor as I have.

Thanks again for such a thoughtful post.