Turbulent Times for Minnows, Dolphins and Whales.

Disclaimer: This post might seem a little bit disjointed but it's my attempt to shed some light on the problems I've see going on. This is not an attack piece and I hope it's not taken that way. I would like to think of it as constructive criticism.

There has been a lot of negativity in the steemit ecosystem as of late. I guess this is to be expected as we are human and no one said it was going to be all cupcakes and rainbows. (I've watched Trolls way too many times) I've noticed a couple of things that have happened over the past year. I'm not sure if me talking about it will really make a difference but nothing ever got solved by sitting on the sidelines.

My first observation

I first joined steemit over a year ago and was pretty awestruck as to what @ned and @dan were trying to build here. I bought some steem and saw it go from less than a $1 to $4 pretty rapidly. Not long after I created an account and started looking to see what type of content was being shared and rewarded on this platform.

This pretty much sums up the main problem many minnows face here on steemit. Not everyone here cares about quality content and those with huge steem power wield it irresponsibly. In essence they rewarded a video for all of the wrong reason. From what I see it was a marketing ploy to be be used as talking point. As seen at the 5:30 mark on the video below.

Not to hate on @guerrint but not to long after receiving this windfall she stopped posting on steemit and has been cashing out ever since. This was one of the reason that I didn't even attempt to start using steemit. It seemed unsustainable and to me was propagating all of the things that were wrong with social media. It also didn't help that the price fell from $4 dollars to .17 cents. During the decline I sold off most of what I had. That pretty much cemented it for me that steem was just another failed crypto experiment. I have since changed my mind.

More misguided actions

Steemit is a community driven site which is common with open source software. There are a lot of actors that have been trying to make this platform the innovation that it should be. It's pretty much a thankless job. One awesome steemin is @officialfuzzy the creator of WHALESHARES on openledger. Given his active involvement I was surprised that @ned flagged him him for a project he was trying to put together. He also gave no reason for his flagging.

This is a little disheartening but @officalfuzzy took it in stride. He is continuing to be the defacto leader of steemit in my humble opinion.

Abuse of power

With great power comes great responsibility. A little due diligence would have uncovered that whatever abuse @noganoo was receiving from @berniesanders was justified. Upvoting someone who has been making threats against other people either shows that you agree with their actions or you didn't take the time to figure out the whole story.

What really bothers me is that even with this new found information he didn't even remove his upvote.

Each person on here has the right to do whatever they please with their voting power but if you are the creator of said platform you should try to lead by example.

The Current Flag War

Right now @dan and @berniesanders are in a flag war that is causing considerable collateral damage to the steemit community. I'm not really sure what started it but it has gotten way out of control. Technically @dan is no longer part of Steemit Inc as he resigned 6 months ago

He has been posting a lot about EOS on steemit and now every post that is related to EOS is getting flagged by @berniesanders. Most people have already chosen their sides on this matter and think that bernie is acting like an asshole. Even though this may be the case bernie is trying to prove a point.

Love him or hate him bernie has done a lot for steemit. He is actively trying to combat the spam, scams and plagiarism that plague steemit. His method is really unorthodox but he has a code that he does live by. In fact bernie actually stuck up for @ned even though it's obvious that he does not like him one bit.

If bernie were to give in and stop all of his projects on steemit I think things would go down pretty quickly. It would have to fall on other leaders of steemit and from what it looks like their plates are already full.

In Closing

The people I mentioned in this post will not be going anywhere anytime soon. It's best to let bygones be bygones and move on. I'm not even sure if any of the people that I mentioned above will care for my opinion or even read my post. Who am I to them but just another person on steemit. But steemit is a revolution and movement for the people, by the people. We are all human so it is inevitable that we will make mistakes along the way. With that said I just hope that they keep one thing in mind.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend"

We need to find common ground and work together to build this platform. This space has the ability to empower a lot of people. Let's not lose sight of what the true enemy is. The war we are fighting is war for our perception, mind and reality. We are allowing people to believe in themselves and determine what has value not some man in the high castle. Let's put a temporary moratorium on the flagging and help to make things better. When we get over 1 million users then you can go back to your little fiefdom battles. If you made it this far thanks for reading and keep on steemin!!!

Get Your Steemit Merchandise and Try out CryptoPing