Steem is stuck in a underleveraged state
Given all of the tools in the world, which one would you choose and why?
No matter what tool you select, everything will look "some type of way" (Rich Homie Quan anyone?).
If you choose a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you choose a screw driver, everything will look like it can be pryed open or "screwed" with.
Most things in life will follow this rule because coming up with unique ways to use a tool outside of common use is difficult to say the least. Originality is difficult to achieve.
But the great thing is, if the new use is in fact a great use, it becomes commonly accepted.
Steem follows this same rule.
The economical environment that exists within steem is only as good as the products that exist on it. Products after all, are what generates purchase interest and vice versa - this is the classical capitalistic approach. Take bid bots for example. It's a great idea at first to "sell" votes, irrespective of what people might think of it, and there is a huge demand for it. It's such a great idea that its been copied dozens of times over successfully and now dominates the fabric of Steem.
While buying upvotes appears rampant, various sources have compiled available data and have come up with figures in the 15% to 20% range, meaning nearly 1/5 of all payouts from the rewards pool are purchased from bid bots (daily). Is this too much or too little?
Regardless, there is a ton of potential for steem because of the system that has been created around it. The lack of leverage is primarily because of how new the platform is, and the focus on bid bots.
If Steem is the tool, are we using it the right way?
This is the question to ask, and while the answer is open ended, it's the reason why I think steem is underleveraged. Over time, new products will come about and its going to take another share of the upvote economy (which exists within steemit) as well as the greater attention economy (which exists in the open market).
Anither important concept to take in mind is the setting in which the tool is being used. At the same time steem is growing, the environment is filling with other blockchain based social media platforms such as TRX or EOS. One possible answer is thst steem has first mover advantage and will always be ahead of the game, so as long as they constantly evolve, but how will the other platforms try to catch up? The answer is that no one really knows until it happens.
Don't judge a book by its cover
While the most commonly seen posts are on the trending page (the cover) , the good stuff is inside the book and you have to search thoroughly to get the information you want. This extra layer of effort is something that heavily reduces the popularity of steem to a point where only active users will continue to pay into the system with their time and effort.
Likewise, only certain discreet bits of information can be of any use on the steem blockchain. The trick is streamlining the access a d reach to that information as easily as possible. And I think that's a critical component that's expected to exist sometime in the near future.
I really hope to be able to put more time and effort in discovering what else can be done on this platform, but easier said than done!
(Partially directed towards: @booster916)
Whether or not it’s: an automated bot. Your whale friend. Or a combination of the two (your whale friend either automatically or manually always upvoting your content) — “abuse” or manipulation or capitalization of the platform will exist.
This is Steemit.
If people are here just to try and make money (some succeed some fail) — then that is what they’re gonna do, regardless of the quality of their content.
I’d like to hear from someone who’s using Steemit and was not AT ALL influenced by the potential for gaining real world valued rewards for their content. If you say yes that you were influenced, even in the slightest, then you can’t expect for bots to not exist, and you really can’t expect for people to not take advantage of something that is not disallowed.
I actually agree that bots make Steemit harder to: navigate, find good content, get your own stuff noticed, etc.
However... If you did your homework in the beginning or noticed the way it works you’d have left before you could, or should complain... you know why...Posts and comments are organized by THEIR REWARDS!
That’s like going to hell and complaining that it’s hot or that you keep finding the devil around every corner.
Or let’s flip it.
It’s like going to heaven and getting mad when Jesus scolds you for banging Mary Magdalene. Or when Jesus doesn’t scold your friend for bangin her when your dumb ass said no to her.
Disclaimer I’ve only been here since 2018. So maybe things were different in the third day according to the blockchain as opposed to the sixth.
If you’re interested in more analogies please send me a few SBD and your topics. I gotchu.
Peace that’s all I got for now.
First of all this is one of the most badass replies I ever got.
Of cause there will always be people abusing the system like in the real world. Might is right!
But these people should also care about the environment on steemit. The better it is, the higher the value of it. Not talking about the small fish, but the big whales. By making the Steemocean a better place they would make more money than by supporting abusement, scam and so on.
Looking at the best case steemit could be and the worst case scenario, which would you prefer?
We are somewhere between these two right now. The question, where do we want to be in the future?
Everyone trying to abuse the system which will make many people leave or everyone giving their best in a fair competition that will attract more and more people, because everyone can make it on steemit when investing hard work and effort?
The world is not perfect. We have to prepare for the worst. I agree that ideally bid bots don’t help the ideal functionality of Steemit. But at the same time, moving the blockchain and generating rewards while doing it is essentially one of the functions — whether or not it’s iseal is subjective.
I’ll repeat myself in concluding that since it’s a decentralized non officially regulated platform, there is no way to fully police it, and not in an objective way. Check out this post of mine, it also responds to this topic on a slight tangent.
Disclaimer I think I bought an upvote on it...
The whales bring their own private money onto this platform (or were here during the early years). Without them, steem would not exists because minnows would make zero earnings. By that same account the majority of the content here is produced by minnows.
One could say that if whales want to create a better place for their investment, that they should be the one to clean this mess up because it's in their own self interest. But instead they setup bots and sell their votes. Minnows gobble it up.
Who is the wrong here? The answer is thst it's double edged but the fault lies on No one. Here is why:
Steemit is not about letting people "make it" through hard work and effort.
It's about a platform to share ideas. That's it. The money part of it is an accessory for validation. And if people are driven away from the platform because money is the measure of success, then they missed the point in my opinion.
It works like in the real world. The few on the top of the pyramid hold tons of money while the most people have only a fraction of it.
Their is no real wrong or right, only decisions and consequences. And the decisions from the whales influence the SteemIt ocean a lot more than from an insignificant plankton.
So I think whales should do more for SteemIt instead of just running a bidbot and not contribute anything to the community.
Even if someone only wants to run a Bidbot, he should at least keep developing it. At least my impression is that most upvotebots simply upvote everything they put in.
There's so much you could do!
I can think of a thousand things, but I don't see any of them. I honestly have no interest in it, even if I use bidbots. But I think I feel like most of the other users; we use them because everyone uses them
Why are you defending them so much? Are you planing to set one up yourself? ^^
I dont plan on setting one up, but I wanted to understand how they operate before using one.
For the most part, the bidbots have to pay their delegators. They also need to pay for server costs. Once you combine that with multiple bidbot services offering better and better returns, you end up with bidbots slaughtering each other for profit. At the end of the day, if you pay someone to review those posts, they will operate with no profit and disappear. But obviously, if they just let it run wild, the bot owner makes free profit with no effort.
There is a reason why they are the way they are, which is why their model is doomed.
My point in defending them is that people judge the way things work, but most people don't understand how it works nor do they care to make it better, but still want it to be better. So all people do is complain.
hence why i think steem is underleveraged. A lot of potential. but you don't want to do anything but complain about the service. Dont get me wrong, you have every right to do so, and you can use whatever service (or not) that you like, but I think what you are saying, believing and doing is a bit inconsistent and I've struggled to understand why the inconsistency exists (hence my probing).
edit: also to establish minimums and maximums for posts (which i think is fair for the bidbot), doesnt mean much to the grander scale of things because another bot service will just swallow up where the other lacks. The real solution is to create a more lucrative service for minnows to use, not to constrain them.
Of cause they have some costs but look at the big bots. Its their own problem that they are giving 95% of the delegations away, but they still make 600€ per 2,4hours or more. That is a huge amount of cash they generate and if they can't make a concept for taking wins with that it is just bad business imo. They could give the users "just 80% for doing nothing" and invest the other 10% into some projects that make steem a better place and so on. The possibilies are there but the human greed will always be one of the seven deadly sins
Bid bots were a good idea for the capitalists behind it but they have a pretty bad impact on the platform. They are printing money while taking the platform into a bad light which is pretty sad..
How would you explain that they are printing money? I understand that it's a metaphor, but the way I see it, the bidbots are just another mechanism to push the upvote process. Whether they exist or not, the daily generated steem gets generated either way.
everything they do is upvoting for money. They do not contribute anything good to the community. Pushing trashposts into trending for money is not something I would call a nice skill. THey just have to lay in their beds and look, hot the bot geht more and more SBD from day to day while pushing trash into trending the community did not decide to be there but a single person
Technically speaking, they aren't the one pushing trash. It's the content creator doing that. It's also the people who support the bidbots by providing delegations.
It's hard enough to search for content as it is. The true negative to bidbots is the people who use them to promote poor content. But poor content is subjective. Not all content is beneficial to all.
Let's look at another scenario. If you don't agree with the value of a piece of content, regardless if it was upvote using a bidbots service or not, how would you determine if it's beneficial to the community or not?
I'm asking because the broader question is the resolution to the problem.
The thing is that it is a difference if the community decided that it is a good post or a single person, that was paid from the author to make it look like a good post.
Everyone has a different taste but there are many people that are into all the niches out there and they will read the posts and decide if they are good or not. By using bidbots you force your post over the community. I would have the power like berniesanders, I would downvote these posts to hell.
The environment here is the same as in the world outside, full of greedy people who dont care about the community but that is exactly what makes "the good people" leave and more greedy scum arrive. Looking on long term it will just make the community look bad.
And the people delegating to bidbots are the lazy ones who want to earn passive money. But there are much more better projects on steemit you can delegate your Steempower, but they are surely less profitable..
Utopian.io for example, all the people flagging bad content, spam; curie and so on..
Explain yourself human! (Hehe)
The explanation is dumb i know, but I have to use them because everyone is using them. Reaching hot/trending on dmania without bidbots was impossible and imo my memes were better then the c/p crap.
So I upvoted them with bidbots for visibility and the community gave me the needed delegatorvotes to get the dmania upvotes from time to time
But that would not be neccessary if noone would bidbot their posts, expecially the obviously bad ones. I would like to challenge all the mememakers without bidbots and if the community would not like my memes that would be fine but without bidbots there wouldn't be any chance to enter the "competition for dmania upvotes"
Right now we are working at memeit.lol on a system that will not be affected by bidbots and will clear that problem
Ok so we're saying the same thing essentially.
@motoengineer it’s time for the news...
How does a meme contribute to the community? Its just a laugh. Do you want to make people laugh for money? or do you want to make people laugh because you want to make people laugh?
I feel like you just contradicted everything you have been posting about.
You make a good point, but it misses out on taking into account the natural behavior of humans and doesn't work well when steem outgrows its current size (and it will). People will eventually be sorting out too many bullshit posts (like the comment section of a Facebook post). To what point do you police content here?
That's the difficult part to address because every move to block purchased upvotes is a move that prevents other potential developments in the steem economy. Unfortunately, everyone is doing the bidbots thing because everyone is waiting for Smts. That's part of my argument for an underleveraged steem. People are so focused on bidbots that few else is the attention of developers.
Let's look next at another lens of bidbots. If bidbots were an advertising service and people were paying to get on the trending page, it would be fair because you pay for a specific service. I understand it defeats the point of steem and the trending page, but you cant stop people from trying to gain and advantage. That's litterally all we do as humans.
The problem people have is that buying upvotes also takes away from the public rewards pool. But what gives the pool value? Is it the content on steem? Is it the infrastructure? Is it investors? Your choice reflects on what you think steem should be.
It would seem to me that you want the content to be what is valued on steem and your pointing fingers at the investors that make the place suck (typical of real world capitalism) . But I favor the infrastructure, which leads me to the conclusion that bidbots don't really matter. They actually help stir up the economy and can be harnessed into a more positive outcome. That's only possible by allow bidbots to exist.
thanks for making my mind widespread in choosing and know the provisions of steem and I think steem will decline in the next few days, how about you?
Stuck?
Not talking about price. Im talking about how people are using the platform. I think there is a lot of potential o this platform to leverage the blockchain to do more than just posts for upvotes. Once smts enter the scene, we'll unlock a new tool for developers to go wild on. Otherwise, what exists as services, right now on the steem blockchain has been more or less the same for a while.
SMT's (I don't really understand them) should be interesting.
insert the obligatory steemit is still in beta here
Randomish:
https://steemit.com/automobile/@mittymartz/do-you-know-the-engine-operation-of-a-vehicle-and-the-engine-operation-if-a-bike-are-different-talking-about-internal-combustion
Yo @motoengineer and @booster916 check out the above, does it make sense?
The posts explaines how 2 strokes and 4 strokes engines work. And yes, it is right.
It makes sense and is probably correct based on my brief review.
But because we are on the topic of upvoting here, here is why I wouldn't upvote it. All it does is display his knowledge of a subject that is widely discussed and commonly understood (relative to people who work in this field, which would be the ONLY people who would pay for more information about engines). It isnt something that adds value to the community.
It doesnt mean that the content isnt valuable to someone, its just that I dont think he deserves to be paid for something that is available for free everywhere else on the internet. This is from an economic point of view (and i subscribe to the idea that steem is an economy), the information that he presents is information that's readily available for free. So why should he be paid for something that is already available? its a bad product, and the demand is low.
This is true and would mean, that maybe 20% or more of all the steemit posts should not get upvoted ^^
Expecially most of the sciencebased posts
Unless they are presenting a new idea, or something that isnt considered common knowledge by professionals.
I am really trying to be off all this steemit dangerous arguments because I don't like what comes after but in a very light mood I would like to say sth because the post that was randomly selected for example or what ever it was used for.
Let me start by thanking you for clarification on the comment session
And I would like to comment about you saying it's anything that can be gotten online... My idea of that post is to bring what most people may not have thought of, because you are grounded in that aspect of life does not mean others shouldn't not know about it.... Very true everyone can find it on the internet.... That is why it is a research I took out my time to share it in the blockchain and there are technology inclined guys who don't know this as much as I love and know a little about technology and science, am not a mountain of knowledge so as you
So try idea of sharing posts like that is for adding knowledge to those who don't have the knowledge of it and most people are interested in their separate field and seeing some from another field is an added knowledge.... I have been learning about dark matter which I know is online but my attention was called to it because normally I won't go online and look for it
It wasn't an attack on you or anything. Our discussion was about the value of information, your post just happen to pop up.
Our discussion was to determine why a user thinks they deserve a reward for their piece of content. Sharing knowledge that is commonly available is of little value to most, but everyone wants to be paid for effort (except no one really asked you to create that post). That is the conundrum of steem.
Hmmmm
That's true.... It's a market place