Investing into owning your community

Steem is not just a community, it is a community of communities with a great deal of potential to be the home of many more. While everyone worries about their Steem earnings, some of the most empowering parts of the Steem blockchain get continually overlooked and the community aspect is one of them. A lot of people unfortunately seem to think the Steem community should be synonymous with "charity" when it should be more about input than output.

A moment ago I got a couple comments from @brianoflondon:

I'm watching and waiting. If and when there is a turnkey, easy, beautiful way to bring Tommy Robinson's community here we'll do it.

Ownership. I need to feel like we own it. Right now a Mastodon server also looks attractive.

These are important things to consider for the communities - Easy to onboard an entire community and Ownership of that community.

One of the fundamental problems with a centralized platform model is that it takes time, effort and investment to build a community following, but that community is never actually yours, it is the platforms. A user like Tommy Robinson can spend his time building a group and then get deplatformed, demonetized and cast out - but the community doesn't travel well especially in a world where convenience and laziness walk hand in hand.

Now, regardless what you might think of those who get deplatformed and their views, the concept of the centralized ownership itself is what needs to be scrutinized. The platform can support a contributor and increase user base and retention as well as time on site, increase advertising revenue and then, cut away the point that costs them the most, the creator, while keeping the audience they have gathered around them.

This doesn't have to be a controversial figure, it could be some random Instagram starlet who instead of keeping them with a revenue stream, the platform directs their user base to "the next big thing" through the algorithms and impressions and - a person whom they can pay less to.

When you are a user only, you own nothing.

Ownership is a massively important feature of the Steem blockchain because it is an investment into experience and protection of the self and the community that one might care about. Not only does it protect content from censorship of various kinds, it allows a community to be built, empowered and maintained and owned. While each individual member of the community is of course free, the ownership of the community's platform is centralized and can be governed independently from the greater Steem community.

This is a very important factor to consider because while Steem is a community of communities, it is also a platform of platforms where each can have a separate owner while still all being housed together on the Steem blockchain. What this means is that even though a particular platform can operate independently, they all benefit from each other and while none can be shut out, the members of the communities can travel quite freely between platformed communities if they choose.

Replatforming the deplatformed & platforming the yet to platform

This is something that @theycallmedan is aiming toward with @threespeak, but while it is a start, the goal will be that it won't only be the deplatformed that Steem houses, it will be people and communities who are looking to take responsibility and ownership of their own digital experiences. This will mean that rather than build a community upon a centralized platform in the hope to stay in favor so as to stay monetized or even available, they can build their own piece of digital real estate for themselves on Steem and a spiralling and integrated community around them.

At some point, Steem will be the place to join and build upon although many might not know it because they are likely going to build upon Steem layers and applications that are Powered by Steem, in the same way a forum or website might be powered by Joomla. Potentially, companies like Joomla will integrate into the Steem blockchain through APIs to be able to offer plug and play experiences with SMT tokenization and cross-community integration to their users at all levels.

Invest into your people

As they say, the smartest thing a company can do is to invest into the growth and support of their people, because they are the future of your business, the source of ideas, the word of mouth and the support network. Improving the experience of the community members improves the strength of the community itself, and on Steem, that comes with the potential for monetization, the potential for investment by the community itself and, the chance to own and protect the experiences of all communities that utilize the blockchain. While there can be many opinions, many approaches and many conflicts, it doesn't mean that communities can't work together toward a place where everyone can have the possibility to develop themselves.

As a content creator, as a voice looking to gather a community and as a person wanting to be part of something greater than themselves, the best investment an individual can ever make is into themselves so as to be able to strengthen the lives of others. Investing into a community as a contributor is investing into ones own future within that community. The problem with the centralized platforms is, no matter how much time and effort sunk in, one can never invest into that community to protect it from the platform itself.

And as I have said, this isn't just about freedom of speech and controversial topics and characters, it is about creating a space where any one and any type of community can form and have the opportunity to invest into and empower themselves in a hundred different ways - whether it be Tommy Robinson or a local babysitter club to offer services locally to parents through an app - communities can come in all sizes, shapes and forms and each can live along side each other on Steem and retain ownership of themselves.

To create balance in this world, we need to own who we are and what we create - including our digital selves - rather than being slaves at the mercy of the platform masters.

There is a cost of ownership - the responsibility of what is owned.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]