I don't really even quibble with most of it, except maybe the dying part, but mostly because I don't really think it was ever a platform where voting ranking or followers meant much. If it never was that, how could it die as that?

That’s a good point about use cases other than as a social network.

I meant it’s dying as a social network. I believe we’re one decent competitor (that fixes the key issues of Steem) away from any (extant modicum of) critical (social networking) mass exiting for greener pastures.

It's always been a small niche user base and a likely quite a bit larger (and perhaps unappreciated) audience of read-only viewers who never even sign up or sign-in, much less vote or participate in any of this 'rewarding' stuff.

I do see Steemit blog posts sometimes end up on the first page of some Google searches, i.e. drawing in more readers. So that is a positive outcome that in my opinion is not being fully leveraged by STINC (nor Busy.org¹), c.f. for example below my links to missing features.

It seems without rewards then it will be impossible to scale (c.f. also this and especially this) any social networking competitor.

IMO, decentralized will be important to the masses for social media and networking, because corporate controlled databases MUST extract the maximum profit (because maximizing profit is a corporation’s raison d'être) which means deleterious advertising with it’s requisite invasion of privacy and locked down feature choices (i.e. limited choice²) because of the Coasian barrier of critical mass. Users want to be where many other users are. So with these corporate run databases it is like repeating the same mistake over and over again of handing control to “Not Do Evil” that becomes “Do Evil” overlords.

Users will gravitate in exponential growth tidal waves to a platform that has more choice of features and no advertising.

But the problem is that who pays for the decentralization? This is why rewards are so important, but I think Dan Larimer has the incorrect economic conceptualization.

To some people just having a functional platform, probably less censored in practice than a lot of the commercial ones (even if censorship resistance in theory is a bit oversold), where you can occasionally make a little money is good enough.

The censorship resistance is useful for a few of us such as myself being perma-banned from bitcointalk.org³, yet I agree with you that most would not use it for censorship resistance and instead as more of curiosity (if not part of the crypto circle-jerk niche) which is why so many leave (as exemplified by the smallish active users set).

Some of us disagree. Features we need are missing (c.f. also). We’re tolerating it until something better suited is available.

¹ _{I remember you were originally listed on busy.org, perhaps as one of the advisors, funders, or developers (not really clear on what your role was if any). I had high hopes for that site, but frankly I must tell you the UI design sucks in some scenarios. It’s a confusing maze in some scenarios. I will not go down the list of scenarios I have happenstanced on in my limited use of that site. There’s some facets of Busy that I think might be improvements over Steemit, but yet there are gaping holes in the design as well. At least Busy did not remove the feature to upvote your own blog post upon submission which Steemit just removed recently without any notice or discussion! P.S. have you noticed that Steemit mimicked Hackernoon’s saturated, lime green theme (e.g. for links).}

² _Example:

• _{Spotify's dark theme beats Play Music's retina-searing white. Spotify's dark theme gives the app a cleaner, crisper look, and makes the app far easier on the eyes during late night jam sessions or nightly drives.}
• _{Google Play Music's playlists are private by default; Spotify's playlists are public by default and can allow collaboration. Every song you add to a playlist in Spotify, everyone can hear. Google Play Music only shares subscription songs in public playlists, not uploaded songs.}
• _{Spotify doesn't allow users on Android (or web) to reorder songs within a playlist without deleting them and re-adding them in the order desired. Spotify doesn't even allow web users to rename playlists, either. Google Play Music allows you to edit, reorder, and rename playlists on mobile and web platforms.}

³ _{Lunch money “investor” trolls over there don’t seem to understand the reality of delirium.}