3 reasons steemit won't make it out of this decade...
Ok boys and gals,
unfortunately it's one of those posts... I'm going against your confirmation bias. Ignore, downvote or actually provide counter arguments.
So without further ado...
1 - So first up... the happy clappy, ass licking nature of interaction on the site - it's like some weird ass cult where all the high ranking get put on some crazy pedestal. Some are waiting to be thrown a bone by the big swinging dicks... However, what's more worrying, is the censorship of downvoting from high authority members. One downvote can literally destroy your chance of success... The result? Tyrannical cringe worthy interaction.
2 - Most posts are not even read. People are here to "work", not to "consume"... they are upvoting just to get in on the curation award action. Go to posts that are gaining traction and you'll see that the view count is typically lower than the upvote count or at the very least it's some crazy ratio of upvoting to views which is unheard of on any other media platform... ever.
3 - And last but of course not least, there's the fact that steemit is infact a ponzi scheme... Before you start shouting at me that it isn't, answer this quesiton... WHO IS BUYING STEEM AND WHAT FOR??? Where is the demand coming from?? Take the alt coin speculators out of it and what are you left with? People buying steem cos they realise they need to gain visibility by buying steem power to upvote their own content or get more significant curation rewards... So to really play in this game you need to "buy in"... Who benefits? The people who already bought in!
Note: this also includes using steem lotteries such as randowhale.
All valid points and I think it could happen but Steemit is evolving too. You never know how it's going to change. What you see today with the upvoting might not be the case 2 years down the road. It will have to change and evolve if it's going to survive. And as far as people buying in, there is billions of people on this planet and less than 300,000 users on Steemit. It can go a while longer before that comes to a head.
yep - you've hit the nail on the head there.
Like you said, we've got some time... We're under 300k users. How much until it's exposed to largescale scrutiny from mainstream media etc? We don't know... But we've got to keep the discussion going to enforce those changes so that when it steemit is put under scrutiny on a large scale, it passes with flying colours
Thank you for the criticism, I hope to see more posts like these here.
One more valid point: the website frontend doesn't get any updates / upgrades. 6 months ago I wrote that we need at least favourite tags so we don't have to type-in urls like it's 90s again and... not a single change on the website. A lot backend changes that benefit whales tough.
Well - let's wait and see, so far it's quite fun :) Cheers!
haha, 90's style with the dial up connection!
Yeah, I agree that the frontend could definitely be improved a bit, and presumably that's the easiest to change.
I think the current sections on the site where content gets "found" could definitely be improved... a favorites tag section is one possibility for sure. Sites like youtube do that for you with their algorithms by taking into account your watch history / interaction history. maybe we could do it more manually here with the option to click "show me more of this" etc... Anyway, interested idea. cheers
Yes sure thats true, but all coin works the same, you don't have "real" value behind it, just the trust. If you think the classic moneys (dollars etc) currently don't have real value behind it, just the trustness of the country or money. So the main goal of the cryptocurrencies should be to make it more trustable.
Hey @atosz33!
Thanks for the comment - discussion is what we need here.
Ok, so I'm arguing that it's not the inherent value that's the problem. No currency has "real" value. You need to look at where the supply and demand of any currency is coming from to determine what's driving it and what will support the prices.
So, speculation aside...
What's the use case for ether? smart contracts (and rather worryingly ico buyins)
What's the use case for bitcoin? store of value in the crypto space, sending funds around the globe and paying for things since it's the most well known cryptocurrency most accepted in terms of payment (obviously after the scaling issues)
What's the use case for gold? store of value as it doesn't corrode and there is a limited supply, and some jewellery and smaller technical uses.
What's the use case for the US dollar? The world's most accepted payment method backed by a relatively trusted government with relatively sensible monetary policy.
And steem? Just people trying to get ahead on steemit. they buy in, which pushes the price up for the rest of the people on the site.
Yes, and its such a great post, should go into top section.We always should talk about pros and cons to improve the system.
You lost me at
well, you did say "relatively"...
Do you know about the Pareto distribution rule? it goes something like this: there will always be ultra-powerful people on the top of every system, because something like 10 percent of any population are responsible for 90% of the work. It might be closer to 20-80, but that is the gist of it.
Steem is a currency just like bitcoin, except we do a whole more transactions per second on this blockchain. Instead of wasting electricity and hardware to mine, we write stuff and encourage others to write stuff. I highly, highly doubt that Steem will die before most of the other coins.... you are saying 2.5 years basically? Who knows.
@thomasaquinasftw - hahah!! That had me in stitches!! I actually deliberated for awhile about putting "relatively" in there TWICE!! but obviously I caved into the prudent option, haha
Yeah, the title was a bit clickbaitish, but my main concern is to make the platform into a great environment to produce, consume, share and critisize content. Although I understand your application of the Pareto principle I don't see that the it has to necessarily get in the way of that goal!
Yea, thats true. But sadly he has some great views. If you check the "New" section, there is a lot of spam, because it doesn't need to invest/have a good hardware to participate in pools and gather "money", and yea, mostly the valuable content go to the top, but it can be more weak because of this spams than other coins (yes, I know, value of coins doesn't based on spam just the popularity and other pros of crypto). Probably steemit could implement a better system to make the whole thing better, probably ID identifying system.
The real precursors to steemit success are the investments that people have made into education - writing skills and creativity are the only hardware needed here. Smart people intelligently scan the NEW section looking for curatable content.
Great blog post! I agree with everything you have said. I hope changes are made soon. Happy that finally someone spoke out.
I've sat and watched these cringe worthy behaviors from a relatively safe distance and noticed how human nature seems unwilling to change no matter the platform or claims. People should feel safe to not ass lick or criticize on this platform and let the quality of their content actually speak for itself. This is obviously not the case. Followed, upvoted.
There's a reason my reputation is at 13!!
Hi, love such discussions! First of all I like the language used in this Post :-).
Your point concerning whales is absolutely true! So I give 90% for 1. - 100% for 2. reason. Nevertheless we all can count ourselfes "big fish" concerning the fact that this is the beginning of the journey. No one can predict future HFś In my opinion there is much to be done to make this platform more attractive for new users. Time will tell.
To your 3rd. argument there are many videos and posts out there discussing the topic of value in Steemit/Steem. I have a different point of view.
Thank you for the interresting Post.
Hey @whizzkid.
Yeah, there's certainly hope for up and coming hard forks. What changes would you recommend?
Regarding the 3rd point. I'm still not convinced - if you come across a good article / video, please send it my way! :D
Hi, unfortunately I got so much work right now. I got to get some time to post about the value/money craetion in steemit. Will probably post something on Sunday, not in deep delegated proof-of-stake but I will try to set something easy up... .
Concerning changes I do think about getting rid of steempower! It leads to a spiral of investing in order to be heard. There would be no use in creeping in some whales ass. We should have equal voting power. There shoud be a good time/upvote/downvote algorithm to keep more valuable posts up there. I think somehow like reddit. Influece should be build up by following people not by buying in steempower.
Just my subjective thoughts on it while driving home from work.
Greetings, @whizzkid
Interesting points made. Im fairly new to this so only trying to figure out this whole thing. I can see these issues you are talking about. I wonder if it's the system that is fundamentally wrong but can be rectified by people (there are people trying to make it right - whales upvoting undervalued posts etc. ) or it's really a futile endeavor. Either way, it will either evolve in some way that will work around these fundamental flaws or it will perish. I guess only time will tell. I guess, this topic is hard to get right especially on the first go, so worst case it will get upgraded or something else will take its place. It's an evolution.
100% with you on that. Yeah, so I'm not sure if you know about the "hard forks" that have already taken place, but yeah there is the potential and hope for positive change. I too think that it will either smash it out of the park or fizzle away into nothingness. We've got to put our thinking caps on and come up with solutions...
Interesting post, I can't argue with you. Let's hope everything turns out fine in the end :D
I do hope so too! But I think many of the incentives need to be tweaked to get the ship on track for long term success.
nice post
I like the criticism, I agree that the bandwagon effect most people are on is not very promising. I do think that there are a lot of people here to consume, I'm not sure whether they bother upvoting or even making an account though. The real value seems people randomly coming on to the site because some guy wrote a high quality piece about something not written much about, although often earning just a couple of cents.
My question to you would be, since you are on steemit, although you are not pleased, what would you do to fix it? Seems like we can better discuss some constructive criticism aye?
yep absolutely.
I think you're right that someone could just wonder on the site from a google search and that's cool. There is some good content on here and one of steemit's biggest assets is that it makes people, who would not otherwise create content, give it a go and that's fantastic! I think that most of its issues could get cleaned up, if the people with most say choose to do so.
Regarding changes, some ideas for change would be...
1 - Change the disincentive of the downvote if you comment material that people don't agree with / like. This would allow for more "real world" commenting, where people could say things without being scared of being downvoted. How to do this - that's a big topic but just a couple of ideas would be to either change the underlying downvoting rules to be less in favor of the big palyers or create some sort of judicial higher power account or jury that could penalise people for downvoting based on simple disagreement.
2 - maybe do something like not allow upvotes unless you're actually on the post url. at the moment I can scan through steemit.com/created and just upvote posts without even clicking on them!
Regarding the ponzi scheme element, maybe in the long run, if the platform has the right incentives in place to generate a great environment for producing, sharing and consuming content, then I think the demand for steem could be justified from advertising money flowing onto the platform.
That's just a couple for now cos I'm in the middle of something... but let's keep discussing
Both points seem very valid. Especially the 2nd I find interesting. Would there be a way in creating some barrier to upvoting in which a standard of reading/understanding has been established? What If we could let Steemit randomly post blogs in between blogs of every user, containing a somewhat random std title and picture so people wouldn't notice it was a 'fake blogpost'. Every upvote on that post, which contains a warning of not upvoting as it is a quality test of upvotes, will severely punish the upvoters. That way, blatant upvoters such not even reading the blog could be somewhat incentivized to actually click on the post and somewhat read them. The idea can be polished, but the raw concept doesn't seem to bad right?