To those who have recently been reading and curating posts on Steemit, it comes as no surprise when I say that is becoming quite obvious our international community is growing rapidly. More and more often I am seeing posts in various languages on the new section, most notably Chinese, Russian, Korean and Japanese. There is no doubting that this is fantastic for Steemit as a platform but I believe we will soon come to a tipping point where more will have to be done to support these users. In my opinion building multilingual infrastructure is the most important way we can demonstrate the real value of Steemit to the world. A note before reading this, I don’t know what Ned, Dan or any of the other developers have in mind for the future so many of these ideas could be on their to do list.

Multiple Instances of the Steemit Website

Currently we have tags for different languages such as ru for Russian speakers or cn for Chinese speakers but this is not enough, we NEED to make separate instances of the site. Part of what makes sites like Steemit or reddit so great is you can explore every type of interest with precision and without a jumble of topics. If I want to read about Japan I just go to the Japan tag or if I want to talk about money I go to the money tag, ect. This is what makes these types of social media platforms intuitive and fun to use, but currently other languages lack the ability to use these features. Sure they could use tags like moneyru or moneyjp but it just adds a layer of unneeded complexity to the platform. A possible, better alternative, would be to just run a translated, separate instance of Steemit.ru or Steemit.jp with its own topics, tags and posts. We aren’t talking about using a separate blockchain, just creating an easier tool for other languages to access the content relevant to them.

English is only spoken by 6%-8% of the world in terms of total population and isn’t even in the top three most spoken languages in the world! We are essentially pushing away 92% of the market by not providing separate instances of the site to other languages. When other websites or companies try to move to other markets in the world they have to do multitudes of work with rebranding and changing products to cater to a different population, but Steemit doesn’t need to do any of that. At its core, Steemit is a blank canvas that allows people to do with it whatever way they see fit. All we need to do supply the paint and the paintbrush. By adding instances of the Steemit website platform we can grow our user base exponentially. Just use bitcoin as an example and see how many Chinese people have flocked to that platform, which by many accounts, has many more Chinese users than all English speaking users combined. Let’s not hurt our potential by isolating ourselves from the majority of the population.

A Client Side Copy of the Steemit Website to Avoid Censorship

One of the strongest arguments for using public blockchain based platforms, is their ability to thwart censorship. Unfortunately in many parts of the world, internet censorship is a way of life and the possibility of website blacklisting is very possible. I know there are some clients currently being worked on by developers, but it will be especially important that we make translated copies for the languages that need them the most. For example Facebook and Twitter are both blocked in China primarily because they provide the freedom to speak your mind and start movements. Steemit being a censorship resistant platform could give anyone living in a country that censors the internet, massive value. Even if the Steemit site is blocked, there needs to be a UI friendly client side copy of the website that can provide the same service to users in these countries.

The worry isn’t just about censorship of content though, there is also a real worry about getting your identity outed on a centralized website. There are numerous countries in the world that can easily obtain identities from a site posting and have those people thrown in jail. In many place journalistic freedom of speech is something that is not a right, but a luxury that can be revoked at any time a government wishes. With the anonymity that blockchain technology provide, people will be able to sleep better knowing no one is going to kick down their door in the middle night because of a post they made criticizing a government.

How Can We Achieve This Goal?

The most important thing to talk about here is how we can achieve this goal with what we currently have. If we don’t attempt to put a plan in action then this is all just talk. The developers we have are fantastic but they will not be able to do all of this by themselves. The developers have and could earn more than enough to hire a few translators and developers to create an instanced version of each language. I am sure there are people that are part of this community who will do it and are willing to be paid in Steem. I have seen them recently hiring for other jobs and this one is just as if not more important. Im called on @Ned and @Dan to make a plan for expanding to multi language user bases, or at least comment on what they have in the works for the future. I know it may be asking a lot from them but in more ways than one, other parts of the non English speaking world need this technology and the value it adds to their lives, more than us.

-Calaber24p