RE: What Should Be Trending At Steemit? + Jerry Controversy Of The Day (Bonus)
Nah, it's really not. Upvoting by bots seems like the only way things move forward around here. As it stands, too much SP is required for accounts to have a meaningful vote. Not everyone has the capital to achieve high SP. The problem is that whales don't manually curate since its easier to sell votes to bots.
Having 1000SP earned barely gives a $0.20 vote. That's the issue. We have too many new users with sub 500 SP so there's not much to go around. What does go around only goes to vote bots. 1000SP should give at least a $1 upvote at full power. This way minnows can upvote meaningful content. All I see are the same individuals in the hot and trending tabs that self vote since they dropped $5000 back when Steem was under a penny and have ridiculous amounts of SP.
This has to change or Steemit will be ruined.
"The problem is that whales don't manually curate since its easier to sell votes to bots."
I agree with the first half, but don't have data to corroborate the second. There's so much crap on here that curating is a terrible chore and pays very poorly. Whales are just doing what we would all do - the action most economically incentivized by the system.
Why is this something that is a concern or ought to be addressed? This is a DPoS blockchain and a social media platform. Neither of those have anything to do with ensuring that everyone has an equal say or an equal amount of visibility/popularity.
Right, that's easy to say when users were in at the early stages. Think of the blogging aspect of Steemit. When you write daily and write excellent content that only gains $0.10 while someone who got in and dropped $5K in early 2016 can self vote themselves for $50, you start to see the difference on why it should be addressed. We complain when a few select users take unfair advantage of the system, but in your viewpoint this is ideal. In that case, the highest SP users that have over a million SP should constantly self vote themselves to oblivion since they don't care that your rewards are now basically gone. The whole point of Steemit is that you get paid for your time. That's what makes it so lucrative and why its grown so fast. If we take that away and have such a large discrepancy in inequality, people will be tired of the bs and leave.
For Steemit to grow we need to not only gain new users, but to retain those users and keep them engaged. Nobody wants to be on a platform where they're not appreciated and their work basically gets binned. Meanwhile, I see accounts that post the dumbest Memes and constantly get paid hundreds. It's easy to say that when you have 40k SP, but you wouldn't be so quick to do so if you had 500. We're in the early stages, but if Steem goes to $25 or even $250 then what happens? The rate of SP that new accounts gain will be so small that nobody will spend their time on here.
Nobody wants to be on a platform where the inequality is so great. That's how Steemit loses its user base and the price plummets.
Of course, this is my opinion and I'm sure that everyone will have their own say on the matter. Unfortunately though, it doesn't matter since neither you or I have the ultimate say on how this site is run.
I so, so, so agree with you! How about having only the 14 SP delegated when you start! Thankfully I was able to buy $100 of STEEM to power up, and won a contest that allowed me to power up a little more, but I'm still sub 100SP. My upvote doesn't give someone even 2 cents yet. (Though in a week I think I achieve a .02 upvote!)
Meanwhile, I put in the time not just writing quality content, but curating it. I'm willing to do that with meager compensation on the curation end for sure, but I have so little power to help those I'm trying to promote simply because I'm too new and not independently wealthy.
I use myself as an example, but this is not me complaining for my own sake. I'm concerned about the future of the platform for these reasons. I invited a bunch of new people to join me here on Steemit last night and I see a few have today. But I don't know how to guide them through this issue other than telling them to use bots to advertise their posts. Some can, some can't. Those who can't, will they stay? I can't exactly help them with my .02 upvote.
Sadly it seems like this place turned out just like the real world. The rich get richer and the poor always dream of moving upwards but the system strongly favors those who already have wealth. Voting value needs to be more evenly distributed. New accounts shouldn’t be voting only $0.01
Yes, it is unfortunately repeating that dynamic. Old money wins. And I only have a .01 vote because I could spend $100. Those who can't do that don't even have a .01 upvote. You have to have 23SP to give a penny at full power, and the initial delegation is currently 14SP.
If I understand correctly, that 14SP used to be 28SP. So is this continuing to decrease? Is there some reason the platform's growth can't sustain giving new users enough SP to be fully active on the platform? Value of upvote is one thing, but I hear of people at 14SP also having terrible bandwidth problems. Is this meant to be a "pay to play" platform? I thought it was supposed to be about "proof of brain."