How to Fix Steemit Inequality

in #steemit8 years ago

I am not a Marxist, let's start with that, but it's obvious for anyone that there is something wrong with the reward system how authors earn rewards and how curators earn rewards, and it's pretty biased towards the STEEM POWER a user has.

WHALE.png
(from: http://steemwhales.com/)

Now since the top 25-50 people hold unproportional amounts of STEEM POWER, more so the #1 @steemit account has really unproportional amounts, this skews away the voting power from everyone else. It has to be made more equal.

Now first of all, I am a Capitalist, so why am I talking like a Marxist?

I don't, this is from a business perspective, it is in the best interest for Steemit to fix this problem, otherwise people will leave, and they are already leaving based on @elyaque 's daily report, about 55.49% of users are already inactive:

4i2u33b.png
(by @elyaque at https://steemit.com/steemit/@elyaque/daily-steem-report-october-1st)

So what is the point of getting new people if they will become inactive eventually, and they will if they will only earn 1-2 cents on their posts.

Besides I am not talking about redistributing STEEM POWER, that would be very immoral, I am talking about skewing the reward system in a way to benefit the authors and curators, without touching the existing STEEM POWERS.

Let's face it, we have 50 people moderating 100,000 people? Sure you have to realize there is something wrong with that, and I am sure the whales have good intentions to pick up good content, but still they cannot go through 100,000 people posting daily, so it would make Steemit like a giant lottery, which it shouldn't be.

Steemit will have a lot more success if people are active here and are incentivized to promote it to friends, but if they barely earn 1 cent, what kind of PR is that?


Solution

There are many solutions that people have came up with, and there are many ways to fix this, but the core of the issue is to make the voting power less skewed towards the STEEM POWER sharehold, and include other variables too like reputation, or daily activity.

For example the reputation could be a multiplier, for every reputation bracket you would get a multiplier, that would multiply your final earnings:

BracketMultiplier
0-101
11-201.1
21-301.2
31-401.3
41-501.4
51-601.5
61-701.6
71-801.7
81-901.8
91-1001.9
101-1102.0

Or adding things like if you are active every week, you get an additional + x0.1 multiplier for every week you are active, that would be stackable, and if you are inactive for a week, you lose the chain.

And many more, creativity could come handy here, but it should also incentivize people to stay active for longer. Furthermore I am sure the STEEM POWER will become more distributed eventually, but still adding these features now, would help keep existing members instead of focusing on getting new ones, or focus on both.


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Sigh, another socialist suggestion. If the devs implement this, I'll just power down, and the money will flee the system, then no one will get anything.

What is socialist about this exactly? Or what is exactly the point of having 100,000 users if only 300 or so get paid?

Don't you think it would be a fantastic marketing opportunity to pay minnows more, which would create a chain reaction, giving us potentially millions of new users and a lot more investors?

People come to where the money is, and I think if more people would get paid, we could reach the size of Facebook within 1 year, just with this 1 feature.

It could boost STEEM price too eventually. It is a circle of success: more money paid out -> more users -> more investors investing ...

Because you are advocating the redistribution of voting power from those who have paid a lot of money for Steem Power (like myself) to those who haven't. That's socialism. It doesn't matter if I'm not losing the nominal value of my SP but you want to siphon away its effects.

Ok, but what if in return we get 10 million new users? Of whom a lot of people would be big investors, making the STEEM price go massively up. Would it be worth then? Your investment could double or triple.

We have clear potential here, and we only need active users. Imagine if things like SteemMarket would go viral, and would be integrated to serve 10 million users. How many billions of dollars would that bring to Steem?

Paying out users is the strong point of Steemit that differentiates it from other social media. We should explore this feature more strongly in my opinion.

So what would you suggest to make this a better place for everyone not just the select few.

I'm mostly fine with the way Steemit works now. I do have a few suggestions for improvement which I've posted in my blog. I won't repeat them here.

Ok Ill. go have a read, which post is it?

I have read both, upvoted both but can't leave a message. I agree with what your saying about the flags members use I also think any ideas that helps the site grow and not turn stale a good idea too. There's not enough Whales, the site is full of new posts that haven't got 1 read. Steemit is not just for the Steem rich it could be doing a lot of good sharing about. I think if you have invested real money in the site then I think you should have a say how that money is used BUT being a minnow in a massive pond I have no chance of growing.

What the heck are you complaining about exactly?
https://steemit.com/moving/@karenb54/the-biggest-mistake-i-ever-made
$171.45

https://steemit.com/joke/@karenb54/there-is-no-way-that-is-going-to-happen-too-me-ever
$30.27

"BUT being a minnow in a massive pond I have no chance of growing."
Your account has 389.669 STEEM, you have grown. You are not a minnow, you're are salmon fish or something.

Again, if there is another forum paying you more, then go there instead.

I wasnt comlaining, the I shouldn't have been there it should have said Minnows have a hard time growing. We dont have enough Whales to notice all the great posts that are going through without a read. I'm allowed to have a opinion. Seems when someone opens there mouth here and disagrees with someone with a higher rep there in the wrong. My opinion most minnows won't do as well as they should on here because they won't get the attention they need. The site won't survive with just whales voting whales.

This is very interesting. I do agree the voting is clearly mis-spread. Clearly a lot of the "whales" work together and control what posts get boosted up. Its Something that keeps people away from continuing it get difficult to survive. I followed you and provided an up-vote :) please consider following back and giving my page a look. I show ways how you can build your account from nothing!!

Indeed, there is no rationale between 50 people moderating 100,000, even if every whale checks out 50 users each daily, which I am sure they don't that is just barely 3% of users who might have a chance, but not guaranteed.

Thanks, I will check you out as well.

We need an incentive to carry on, it gets frustrating when you write your heart out and only get a few pennies, there's nothing to keep members here, I for one am having trouble, I spend a lot of time here but starting to think maybe its not for me

I'm not slating the site but when your writing your heart out and don't get much back of course your going to lose interest.

The fact is that this is still a business, and it works just like a corporation. The major steemholders (like major stock holders) have more power. Also they have more influence, and they probably not only want to keep their wealth, they want to grow themselves and make even more... I don't think anyone except minnows are interested in distributing more wealth evenly...

But I am not talking about wealth redistribution (that is clearly marxist), i am talking about opportunity distribution (which is more capitalist).

If people are not using Steemit, then investors wont buy Steem, it's that simple, Steemit has to be an active social media with many users, and the only way to achieve that is to reward them.

There has to be a compromize, otherwise what good is for the major steemholders, if Steem price goes down. It takes many users interested for the price to go up.

Sorry! I did understand what you meant, I just stated that the wrong way. I just don't think the investors and Steemit will care too much. People will keep using Steemit as long as they are still making a buck or two. Not all of the users will stay, but there will still be people steeming!

But then Steemit will never grow big, paying users is the only thing that we can capitalize on, and it's the big feature that distinguishes us from other social media.

If we fail to enhance this feature then what is the point of Steemit?

I agree, I just said that I don't think anyone in charge of Steemit cares... They are happy right now as whales. I think it's when a lot of people start leaving Steemit that they will either do something to make Steemit better, or move on to the next idea that they have. Kind of a pessimistic view, but that's how businesses work... Anyways, I'm happy that I can make money off of a social media website! Would more money be nice? Duh! But I'm working on my page and it is still growing!

Let's hope they do, because they cant cashout the STEEM POWER and run away, they have to stick around 2 years in either case, so they have to do something in the next 2 years in order to fix this problem or we all go down together.

I already called for stabilizing the price of STEEM first, before anything else, and we can add more feature to improve the public opinion and trust for STEEM.

That is actually something that @ned talked about in Steemspeek today. Something like that. Little incentives, that would make the experience for the new users more comfortable. Like you made your 1st post, here is +5 SP, and stuff like that.

Even that could make a difference, I mean just look at FB, they have so many features, that people stay glued to their screens 24/7. If Steemit could make itself only half as interesting, we would already have a 100 billion $ market cap :)

I agree, the curation algo sends people away.

I am also starting to get tired of steem and even though I check the site daily I have been spending less time here.

I think your multiplier idea for loyal activity would be amazing.

I also think that bounties would help, which I have written about.

I hate the idea of reputation based multiplier because new users have no reputation and I think they need to be rewarded higher.

Indeed, there is no fun if only the top 300 authors get paid, what is the point of the other author's then? This is the fundamental question:

  • If the other 99,700 authors are worth nothing, then what is the point of Steem, why not just hold your money in Bitcoin if it doesnt circulate anyway?
  • If the other 99,700 authors are do worthy, then why are they not paid out enough to stay active on the website?

curation IS bonus. How can being paid for commenting (like we are right now) and voting (not only on the post but on the comments themselves) drive people away? In my not so humble opinion I think a BIG part of the problem is that people (like me) don't understand how the system works.
I'm (finally) beginning to make some money from curation, (not much, but it's increasing every day)...if MORE people curated, instead of worrying about loosing vote power...I'd (we all would) make MORE money from posting. Votes pay..no matter how little it all adds up. The people who vote increase their vote power by USING their vote. Similar to muscles growing when used. (I think)

I think the solution to the inequality is simply getting rid of curation rewards.

80% of the time, people only upvote posts because they think that the post will become popular and they'll get a reward. Steemit says the network incentivizes supporting high quality content which is a total lie. Instead it incentivizies supporting popular content (two totally different things.) If we get rid of curation rewards, people won't upvote posts just because they expect it to become popular, but because they genuinely like that post.

Sure, there's less incentive to upvote, but there doesn't have to be incentives on upvoting. You don't need an incentive to upvote a twitter post. People like Twitter posts because they genuinely like it.

And for those of you who doubt this, why is it that Jeff Berwick could post a picture of a pile of sh*t and still make a thousand dollars?

Now, there is a negative to this. The wealthy Steemit users profits would be tremendously cut if they don't post higher quality content. This would cause less reinvestment in SBD and lower the value of SBD (which right now is on the edge of failure, so I wouldn't get rid of curation rewards at this point). But this could also be a positive in the future because now wealthy users can't take advantage and post crappy content. They'd be pressured to create quality content just like everyone else.


Also, there are many free market solutions coming out like Curie, Steemit newspapers featuring high quality content, and a newspaper that pays people to find hidden gems and features them - @Steemplus (my newspaper) #shamelessplug

Well that would totally break the algorithm of Steemit, besides people will always vote on things they like, so if cat pics are popular instead of quantum mechanics, that is just a flaw of humanity, not of Steemit.

But I would most likely focus on the issue of a small amount of curators (top 50) have to curate ~ 100,000 users, which is clearly unproportional, and there is no way to do that efficiently, unless using bots and stuff like that, but if they use bots, then what is the point of humans?

Wang is a bot...most (If not all) of the top curators are.That's the reason for the 30minute vote power delay ramp up time.
To discourage bots.

Yes that is perhaps a good way to discourage bots, but on the other hand it also discourages normal people to vote, and after 30 minutes your post gets to the bottom of the list, and maybe nobody will vote after 30 minutes, so it's kind a silly restriction, because either everyone takes a cut, or nobody will vote...

One feature that should be tweaked is the disproportionate power of the flag. One aw shit destroys a whole LOT of atta-boys
Perhaps we need a proportionate down-vote which is separate from a Flag?

Speaking of Twitter (I've only heard of it , never used it myself) Perhaps something like Squeek could be more closely integrated into Steem? I LIKE the long, well thought out, well researched posts. (four a day and then they decline in value...not so much. )BUT...sometimes I don't want to do that. Sometimes I just want to say Hey! and make a short comment on stuff

One other thang...that would be share
I spend a bunchaton of time surfing the web, and sharing it to my FaceBook account...then me and other FB buddies tear it to shreds..(mostly political but a whole LOT of STEM).

Once again, in my not so humble opinion, Sharing , coming from out in the Net INTO Steem, could be a very valuable feature...I'm not sure how it would be integrated.

FaceBook has a LOT going for it. Steal from the best. Best is defined as what works.

I don't know enough to know if your suggestion is a good one. Upvoting because good balanced content on an important subject with solution focus. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks, it is what it is, I would like for Steemit to succeed, and for that some compromizes have to be done. Given how many inactive users there are already, that should be a red flag. And less than 2% of total users are posting daily, so that should be another red flag.

I think if people would start earning more STEEM , the price would go up significantly, because it would create a massive marketing opportunity for us to beat the social media giants.

Taxation is theft.
Your proposals sure sounds like a tax in disguise.
Voteing power is skewed by SteemPower AND reputation.
If you want more Steem Power...either work for it...or invest some money or mine.
The time for mining was a window (due to technical reasons) which is pretty much closed.
Feel free to plop down a few hundred thousand or a few million dollars to increase your SteamPower. If you lookit the account value of some accounts, like BernieSanders for example, that appears to be exactly what they did.
Which do you want? Equality of opportunity? or Equality of results?

This is not a tax , a tax would be to redistribute the STEEM POWER, which is clearly NOT what I am saying. Since I only want to skew the rewards, not the existing capital.

People who already invested in STEEM POWER, would still have their equity, I don't want to touch their equity. If they power down now, in 2 years they would still get the same amount of STEEM (+interest%).

I only want to redistribute the NEW STEEM POWER, in a more minnow friendly way. Yes that would cause some inflation, but there is already inflation going on. The only question is what will the price value of STEEM will be.

And in my opinion, if those 100,000 users become active, and if we get 10-20 million more new users, whom attract new investors as well, then I think the STEEM price will go up enough to fund the author/curator payouts.

Otherwise what is the point of having 100,000 users if only 200-300 users get paid, why not just have 200 users and the whales shuffling the money back and forth if the other 99,700 users don't matter anyway?

apparently I don't understand how the system works.
How bout you explain it to me.
THEN
explain how your changes will be beneficial and NOT steal money (by devaluation, rather like the FED, from the people who have already invested?)

Because by paying people more, we will get new investors to invest in Steem, which will make the price go up enough to fund this feature without causing loss to people.

Look Steem is already inflationary, there is no way around that, so just by skewing this towards minnows, in a way to get more people, will get us new investors, which would make the price go UP.

There are of course benefits vs drawbacks, but I think if payouts would be more equal, STEEM price would go more up.

How much do you get paid on FaceBook, Twitter or Reddit?

By signing up to some marketing websites and / or promoting affiliate marketing services you could earn more on average than on Steemit on average. Of course I dont advocate spam, but I used to do affiliate marketing on FB years ago, and it paid quite good. Used to earn 1000$ a month from it, but later quit it, as I am making much more from investing in crypto now.

(too deep in the nest).
but it wasn't Spam.
100 a WEEK would sound pretty good to me right now.

No i was not spamming per se, but there are others who spam social media with ref links, but they get banned fast. I was trying to avoid ban by following their link rules.

It requires a lot of research to find the right niche, some products come and go, and if you promote bad products it will cost a lot. I used to buy advertisements too to complement it and it makes about 5-6% returns but for the risks of losing money i finally stopped doing it. I ended up in profit, but barely profit, I would certainly not do affiliate marketing in 2016, the amount of bots and fake users these social medias have or maybe after 2010 the financial crisis made everyone poor so they dont buy anymore, in either case, is just not worth it anymore.

However it was pretty profitable in the 2008-2010 era.

you have some interesting ideas here.

I do believe that you are barking up the wrong tree when you're shooting for 100,000 active users. The 80/20 rule tends to apply just about anywhere so a better objective is 20,000 active users. That also factors out the bots and multiple accounts that some hold.

Incentives / features which attract new people to stay around longer is good. Eventually though, users are going to have to face a reality. This may be a social media site that pays, but it is not a money tree that grows because you became a member. You have work at growing and accept that until you have, you'll not be making much.

Those who don't have the stomach for the longterm will have to move on.

Well even though the 80-20 rule could apply, I believe there is a direct correlation between the average amount people earn/ post and the number of active daily users, but it's just a guess, it needs scientific analysis.

But we are far from that, with about 1500 active authors, we are very far away from 20,000 active users, and even if we would have 100,000 active users, the rewards/ user would not increase, it would actually decrease, because you would still have 50 top whales curating for 100,000 users instead of 1500, or you would have 50 whales curating for 1,000,000 users, what would be the reward then?

I earn on average 0.379 SP/day after 2 months of work (and I do have quality articles posted). What would an average guy earn with 1,000,000 active users after 2 months of work in the future, 1 cent/day? Hahaha, now that is a real incentive.

So if the average incentive would be 1 cent/day, how will be Steemit different than Facebook? Paying 0$/ post vs paying 0.01$/post is hardly any difference :)

well that would be 1 cent more than you had :) ... that is something I've never seen addressed by the developers. As the site grows, will the pool of available rewards grow with it or will it just get more diluted?

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