I have Unfollowed Everyone, Stopped My Bot Voting As Well
Following some people always bothered me for some reason. For one, it can be translated into genuine interest about the content of the person producing it. Take another look though in the power distribution and one will find out that people follow the whales so they can get upvotes.
Whales of course have become desensitized with this, especially after watching every single "average mortal" trying to make some profit. It is obvious that some content is really good and deserving of upvotes but most of the content being heavily upvoted is a result of whale circlejerking and old time insiders milking the system.
I really like Steemit as a technology. Heck, I even like some people in here. Nonetheless the economics started making me feel nauseated. I don't hide that I gave links to people for upvotes but I believe this is not only becoming annoying but kinda of a "zero sum shilling". A whale can upvote only that much. It has to be selective. You also need to keep appearances and is just not me. Generally, I dislike most people.
I could pick close communities and write articles like Steemstem and get fat upvotes but even there one has to keep appearances, be political, throw some smiles and cash out. I am not specific to Steemstem. I believe every single organised group works more or less like that.
I prefer from now on to visit the pages of people I like manually. I will vote regularly and honestly to content I really enjoy. I understand this is not the way this game is played and I will probably get burned on the reward thingy but there is special kind of satisfaction knowing you are owning yourself. I also want to contact an experiment which I cannot reveal right now.
Thank you all (whales or not) for your support so far. Unfollowing doesn't mean I don't like you or anything. You will see my genuine "like" if I comment on your posts.
Steemit isn't only, or even primarily/fundamentally, a platform set up to reward "good" content.
It is a blockchain in which new currency (STEEM and SBD) is brought into existence by posting and voting as opposed to "mining" - the way it is done in Bitcoin for example.
This means that there is the opportunity for many, many more people to come into and participate in the crypto economy/movement. Previously it was pretty well limited to geeks.
If you don't think that the fairness in steem is at least a little better than it is in bitcoin, and that the opportunity is open to many more people to participate, then you are blind inho.
Ask one of the newbies on Steem who is complaining about the fairness of it all just how much $ worth of bitcoin they could mine into their possession without a LARGE investment in equipment and knowledge acquisition.
Absolutely agree. This is I why i think no one should complain about the gaming of the system.
One can play it by being an insider and "supposedly" a Steemit promoter/mascot. In now way these people are worth millions for their effort. Is just the way it came to be. The circle jerking rewarded them
One can do what bernie does, that is, selling votes which is not less or more "ethical" — whatever that is. is just another angle one can take in order to make money.
Last and not least comes the sucking up to higher ups or worse, pretending that one makes "Valuable comments". That's completely bullshit in my opinion as well but hey, if it works, I guess there is value there as well.
There is no such thing as equality or fairness anywhere in life. That includes Steemit. There is no way "good" content will ever be presented here and be sustained because the wealth distribution is massively concentrated and the ration only gets bigger due to the economics.
Much like you said though, despite all these, Steemit is the best platform one can earn cryptocurrencies and is backed up by an awesome piece of technology.
Agree to all, but need to make a statement to your last statement "Steemit is the best platform one can earn cryptocurrencies and is backed up by an awesome piece of technology"? Is it the best? Don;t forget platform like Viuwly and LBRY. Ok, they are more for video, but they just started. And what about what Synero does with WildSpark? And I assure you, we will see competition to Steemit, eg blogging platform with monetary reward systems that may disrupt Steemit and Steem, but may also not, since the law of first movers also plays a big role in economics. Although it seems Steemit is the best thing around, it may not be the best thing anymore (LBRY coins is doing fantastic BTW), it is maybe unique in its kind still, but I predict not for long.
For now Steemit is a better option. (at least financially wise)
As a blogger, you are right. As an musician, posting to Musicoin may be better, Steemit can be an additional source of income, to circle their musicoin posted materials also here on Steemit.
Actually this is exactly what steemit is or should be. It can however be anything you want it to be. It does have many other current and potential uses.
Although Steemit lowers (somewhat) the barriers for the none-geeks to come and play and have (theoretical) more influence, that doesn't mean that we should be just ok with what Steem Power and Steemit became! In the end many Steemians spend a whole lot of time in this community, while those that spend little time, take most of the monetary rewards. Of course, everybody is entitled to decide to stay or leave, to accept or not, to stay quiet, or speak up. @kyriacos decided to speak up and act, and to be honest, maybe it is a good way to go.
It's not about time. It's about whale circlejerking. You can't stop it. It is what it is. As far as new blood comes in the system is sustain. They just have to pretend amongst themselves that they "work" for the community and pay themselves 100 times more than a facebook community employee that handles x100000 more traffic.
I used the "Time" as symbolic, since the high SP holders may spend their workweek on Steemit, but with what they do they take a MUCH higher income. With the vote bots emerging, they even take a MUCH higher 'curation' income. But it is not only the circle jerk of the whales that causes the issue on this platform, generally (with exceptions of course) users are trying to get the attention of the SP holders that are bigger than they are themselves, ie in the SP pyramid the focus of attention of users is to levels above themselves. Although I didn't do any analyses I predict most auto votes go to SP holders at the same level of the one who auto votes, or above and rarely to lower levels. Manual voting by the higher SP holder almost came to a halt. And sure, some of them are still voting for posts they like, which can be seen for lower SP holder when they get a vote as they getting a bone thrown from time to time. In the end, the bottom part of the S pyramid keeps the platform relevant, support the growth of the platform, while those at the midlevel to top of the SP pyramid are take the majority of the revenues coming out of everything, including the growth of the platform and with that also the growth of the value of Steem and SBD.
The last days what comes on my mind over and over again is your article posted during 2016 about why you don't want to be a leader. You are walking your own way, making your own path. I say it will be for the better, I removed all my autovoting as well some weeks ago and I do manual curating for some time now. I lost a lot of votes and my rewards drop considerably. But I expect this to be a better indicator for my blog about what I do wrong and what I have to focus on to become better. I do not have any solutions yet but I am probably heading the same way as you soon. Best of luck.
Glad I see other like you take a similar path. I believe this is much better way to do it because anws if the previous system continues, Steemit won't last. Already competitors are coming up with much better solutions.
I noticed sola.ai recently. pm me the rest if you have the time. I want to see what innovation they bring at the table.
I just wrote an article yesterday and choose to reply to your words because I pretty much follow the same path like you here on steemit and this since June 2016 but I find it highly "impolite" to unfollow people, I once chose to follow. It simply makes people feel "bad" @kyriacos and I also think its selfish, even rude. I have to admit that I wanted to do the same a while ago, started to push the unfollow button every day at least 20 times but stopped again. I got used to my messy feed.
Thats not my intention and whats the big deal anyways to keep following?
Sometimes authors deliver good content and sometimes not.
I still have the opportunity to curate manually but there are authors I would not want to miss out, due to time issues on my end.
Unfair or not ....It's a great platform producing STEEM and some of the people here are more awesome than in real life!!
I understand where you are coming from. It felt and still feels right to me.
I have nothing against the people I followed and then unfollowed. Those who do matter they will see me commenting in their posts.
I don't care about fairness. Life is unfair. It's just it's not worth my "social" time. I can't be that fake for the same of money. I have enough.
Fair enough :)
Knowing your honesty through your articles, I read for many months now ( on and off), I also understand your point.
The beauty of this place...We do as We wish.
Somehow you made me re-think....I should unfollow everybody who never gives a "shhhh...." about my articles.
I wonder if there is a button to unfollow everybody at once?
Anyways....
Good luck with your new path!
Do people even know when you unfollow them?
Yes! I use #steemify by @blockbrothers for notifications
I guess I might end up baving to buy a stupid iphone lol I'll try not to though. I've been doing ok so far.
Fantastic... I've been thinking the same thing @kyriacos.
Please have a look at these blogs on Steemit; none of them are mine, mind you.
Proper, quality content from some newer folks I've found and sincerely enjoy reading; you may find that you enjoy them as well:
@themadgoat
@benjamingroff
@lordvader
@thewisesloth
@neilstrauss
@the-alien
@snowmachine
These recommendations apply to everyone reading this comment as well.
These blogs are wonderful and worth your time looking into, unfortunately some of them aren't getting the visibility they deserve.
Hopefully this post will serve to help correct that!
Have a beautiful day everyone!
@scan0017 😘
Everything always so much someone can handle before blowing up , but I like your motivation for still being on this paltform . We can say one conclusion, greed gets to people
I think that bots have created a major issue on Steemit. As I’ve said before, Steemit is constantly touted as a platform where you get paid and the best content receives the most. This simply cannot be true when bots auto upvote some posters to hundreds of dollars within seconds of the post going live and without any human having read it. That is not how curation should work. However, bots are used and to an extent, do work, so people will continue to use them.
(I have used upvote bots previously but do not currently do so).
I remember a while back Ned (I think) wrote a whole thing about how bots would be a good thing because they'd evolve to evaluate the content themselves and upvote good content.
That's why it's there/allowed. (And, well, it would probably be nearly impossible to actually prevent...)
But the reality is that no, bots are not going to be reading/evaluating content pretty much ever. That's the kind of thing Google is probably working on, and decades away from accomplishing. Self-driving cars are easier, you just have to avoid objects. (He said oversimplifyingly.)
I agree. Bots are hard to prevent but don’t add anything and are not going to be able to curate to the degree a human can.
If a bit can evaluate good content it can also create content, so it will just be a platform of bots writing and curating articles!!
Advertising.
Bots are not there to evaluate good content. They are there for circlejerking
They are used for advertising which I am okay with but I don't like the lack of transparency that gets the newbies led astray.
Now there's an idea. It would remove at least all semblance of sycophantry, manipulation, circle-jerking, and whale-following and other insincerity.
I have noticed there is a small group of people whose content I check manually by typing in their names anyway, and they are a much smaller group than those I follow. Consider this I must.
Yeap, Even in facebook, this is what I used to do. This is I guess what we call "genuine care".
I actually did this, too. Just to try it out. Your stuff, for instance, I check manually anyway. Let's see how this goes.
It is already how I check most content, but there are a few sets of people I follow whose photos I like for showing me other parts of the world, and I just can't readily remember all their names, so I'll still need a list. Must be age, or their foreign and easily mistyped user names 8-).
take a decision that will be comfortable with you. however, sometimes comfort does not have to stay away from the crowd. but, sometimes the comfort will come in the way we can enjoy it.
It's what you deem fit, your opinion doesn't make you less of a good person, nevertheless, I will still keep following your blog, whether you upvote me or not
Have you seen my Bunghole? My people; we are without Bungholes...
Interesting move! I recently proposed a draft model for an idea I initially called a 'generosity algorithm' that might address some of the points here.. I'm interested to know what as many people think as possible.
I will vote regularly and honestly to content I really enjoy
that's the way it should be.
Generally, I dislike most people
MonkeySphere...it's the way we are wired.