Why Steemit is like Pioneering the Wild West: A Modern Day Gold Rush with Lack of Lawmen and Plenty of Vigilantes
Instead of bullets we have spam, instead of train robbers we have plagiarizers, instead of fear mongers we have downvoters.
Alas, we have the good stuff too: The Vigilantes watching out for spam bots and flagging appropriately. We have gold miners curating nuggets of value and providing robust comments and upvotes.
Steemit tends to parallel the Old West; people settled new terrains in search for valuable gems and metals. Many of these people were a wholesome folk, working hard to either strike it rich or make a decent living. Lots of our pioneering ancestors succumbed to poverty or perished from mining accidents, disease, and even murder; however, many more held a steady income. A few hit the jackpot in the form of the good ol’ yellow rock.
Alongside all the wholesome folk were PLENTY of tricksters, fear mongers, horse thieves, train robbers, falsifiers, finaglers, and swindlers.
Even though the scale would tip back and forth between the virtuous and the corrupt, the virtuous did eventually create a stronghold in most settlements by the means of lawmen and vigilantes.
So ….. is it time for official moderators for Steemit? Maybe I am missing something here. I know we have moderation in the form of reputation points and downvotes; I see Vigilantes rising up and banding together to create Vigilante Moderator groups. But I’m feeling like it may be high time to have some Steemit lawmen in the form of officially appointed moderators.
I understand the argument that we are keeping an environment of freedom for the people, and that is great. I am all about defending our freedoms; I am a gun toting American and fiercely stand up for our constitution. But as Steemit grows worldwide, there is only so long before the corrupt usurp the virtuous, and frankly, scare all of us wholesome settlers and pioneers away.
The canary in the coal mine is chirping ….
Photo Credits in Order
https://mubi.com/lists/a-personal-journey-with-martin-scorsese-through-american-movies-checklist
http://indianapublicmedia.org/momentofindianahistory/remembering-pioneer-girlhood/
https://www.pinterest.com/explore/john-wayne/
"So ….. is it time for official moderators for Steemit? Maybe I am missing something here" Yea, you are missing something, this is a decentralized system, there can not be "official" anything. The closest thing we have to official moderators would be the @steemcleaners team.
Well, technically it is supposed to be a decentralized system, but in reality I do not feel that is all the way true. I don't think that Steemit can be considered a true decentralized system when the fate of the many is determined by the few (the whale system). Sounds to me like a fragmented government. But I digress, I really enjoy this platform. I will check out the @steemcleaners team!
At this point there is only really moderation against spamming and plagiarism. The bots don't flag (I speak of Cheetah) but it is easy to see how a whale with a pleasure in fighting this would be pleased to pin the flags in them and let the air out of their reputation. Once a rep score falls below zero it is actually hidden from the feed, unlike 'muting' does not actually do (I realised that the mute button could also activate the 'fold' button on the right of posts too, instead of disappearing it. This automatically folds every branch of the thread tree underneath it.)
There is not and never will be moderators, but if you upset a whale they can sure take a chunk out of your progress at raising your reputation.
The metaphor is one that I used in a recent post that managed to win a few dollars for me: https://steemit.com/steem/@l0k1/the-little-fishies-must-learn-to-swim-for-themselves I point out two differences though: The space we blog-mine is nearly limitless in size, there is no existing population of people, but nearly qualifying as such, are those who already have their stake, the biggest of these being the whales.
Certainly, there is every possibility that Whales, especially, can be nobs. I mean, they might tempt you to lay down a minnow smackdown on them. But don't fall for it. And besides, they won't have the biggest share forever. I don't really see it to be likely that I would ever get to having the size of stake that qualifies as a Whale, but I don't want to be in a position of merely being a curator anyway. This would bore me to tears.
I will be happy if I can get to the 'dolphin' rank, though, where I can hold some influence over development processes. In my opinion, Steem is not and never will be about what already exists, but about what someone invents, most especially tools that improve the value of the platform, new ways to access it, statistical analysis, and so on. I am thus in this business, and this is how I see myself contributing most of all. We will eventually have all kinds of things plugging into Steem, payment portal systems, side-chains for things like groups, and perhaps glue to join this system to others like Maidsafe and systems that join together the currently very many types of instant messaging systems tied to this platform.
Enjoyed your post, upvoted and followed. I really like the reference to being thrown in Mongolia after being raised in NYC. Definitely need to have a thick skin on here. However, I think not being noticed at all is worse than getting flack from other users.
I actually kinda liked it more when I wasn't getting noticed so much. One whale waltzed into my feed, smacked down a vote on it (upvote I mean) and BLAMMO 280 bux! I was like, woo. But before the payout, literally 2 hours before, I went and slapped the whale who put that vote on me. And I still didn't get it after he took it off, and I saw my rep score plummet and bottom out at 10. I am now almost back to where I was before this, and I think perhaps in some ways the gravity of the money involved and as I learned more about how this all works, I have benefited from my stupidity and from here on it will get better.
I am looking forward to the journey. Nobody can get their SP back out completely before 2 years, so I think that the first two years will really show exactly where this thing is headed and what it is capable of. People are at first all excited thinking it's just a rapidly growing (market cap) cryptocurrency, and a way to get paid to blog. But as time goes on, people will realise that the platform gently persuades you to stay involved, even if you just use it as a means to bank some cash to hedge against economic uncertainty, or whatever. Steem includes a liquid transferrable cash like token, a short term deposit asset, and a long term, interest bearing asset with a slow trickle of payouts when you withdraw it.
Once enough people understand these things, I think that there will be a rapid swell in the market cap and we may see Steem eventually push a a couple more competitors down the ladder. I hope so.
I agree that Steem will probably evolve into something quite different even in a years time. I think the name-space is a super cool idea and I would be on board to trying out the beta version! I like the way you think.
I am happy that I have the opportunity to grip my claws into steemit while it is still pretty new and I managed to stronghold a pretty darn good rep. I don't think it will be so easy to waltz into steem without being drowned out 6 months to a year from now. Shoot, its not easy to even do it now.
I would be interested to hear more about your whale experience! For that matter, I think it would make a great post. Almost like a cautionary tale. And for that matter, I also think your name-space idea would be a good post too! Cheers!
I did post about the experience, you can witness the wonder of the entire spectacle if you dig around in my profile page https://steemit.com/@l0k1 I still think the whale in question definitely sometimes gets away with some quite snarky remarks but because of his wallet most are just hoping he'll be nice to them. It's an interesting dynamic in terms of the evolution of the Whale phenomena. Obviously better Whales won't be likely to vote something up just because it's complementary to them. In fact I think this was the 'bright side' to the dark side I saw.
I think as time goes on, the Whales who get there from being good writers will probably be better curators. What we have now is just the first round of investors doing what they think boosts their investment, curation-wise. Over time the effect of this will become more obvious what that should be. The amount of content will increase as well, and probably they will have to work harder for their stake.
I think that it will be necessary after a year or so to add filtering mechanisms or it will become too homogenised. Already with the size it is at, there is some degree of lowest common denominator thing going on. But imagine how it would be with a million Steemians! The interesting stuff would be much harder to find. This is what the SteemHordes thing would be about. Something to help curation, to foster a sense of community, and even, to enable a platform for marketing to some degree, like the Facebook pages, with a small, hand picked set of contributors. Hey, even the groups probably would end up with some kind of ranking system.
I also thought a lot, initially, about user-centric content prioritisation, that draws on information like who you follow, follows, and so on. There is some limited choices for sorting comment feeds but to be able to more accurately reflect how a user wants to see it, without pushing an agenda, it would be like facebook, except without the agenda. It would increase engagement, I am sure.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@l0k1/steemhordes-a-proposal-for-a-sidechain-for-groups-and-moderation
Addressing this issue I have devised a permissioned blockchain system that could be used as a filter for compliant apps to create the Steem equivalent of Pages and Groups, including the delegation of subroles in moderation. I didn't add it but obviously, it would make sense to also link this to a moderated chat system that feeds off the same permissioned blockchain data to enable a chatroom.
This would in no way take away from the value of the broader Steem community, but it would enable users to narrow down their interactions within it by subject matter and association, beyond just simple follow/block methods.
Yeah the follow/block methodology is pretty rudimentary. It would be nice if there was a little more depth and complexity to the interactions here on Steemit. I like the name, SteemHordes! Filtering idea gets a thumbs up.
I will have to poke around at your blog and see the action! Is there a way to send a private message? I want to ask your opinion about something.
Nice comparison!
Thanks!
I don't quite follow the jump from "this is the wild west, and it is desirable" to "but sadly, people are bad so we need a modern police state", if I may paraphrase so freely.
Hmm, I think I did an alright job of showing the pros and cons of both sides. My concern is that the scale will be tipped to the point that spammers and bots ruin the platform. I think it is an inherent struggle for any internet platform or society to decide whether to moderate or not to.
I certainly agree with the concern, no doubt about the undesirability of such content. However, there will be grey areas too. Who will be judge, jury or executioner?
The tools to "moderate" must be on the side of the interface, in the power of every individual user, it shouldn't be centralised on the blockchain. Installing a police force to combat abuse is like driving out the devil with the beelzebub.
You wouldn't outsource your gun toting, so why would you outsource your content filtering? :)
Good points, love the beelzebub reference! I am gaining some perspective on my viewpoint of moderation after reading these replies to my post. However, if steemit were to grow to monstrous proportions (like Facebook) I am unsure if the platform could withstand the pressures of the "bad guys" without moderation. Playing devil's advocate here.
I can definitely agree with that last paragraph. But I don't think Steemit will be exactly like this even in a year's time. I personally have an idea to create an application platform that adds a namecoin-like namespace and attaches account group memberships into it (This is why it is not just namecoin, maybe I could call it 'SteemHordes' or something witty like this). I have still yet to think of exactly how this can be a monetisable feature, but then on the other hand, it is a very very small quid of data, perhaps it can simply be a peer to peer distributed directory of sorts, that simply empowers users to filter their feeds more than the simple trending, hot, active etc.
When you factor in even such a simple possibility of fragmenting the entire pool of Steem discussion into a myriad of little subunits like this, there isn't really a need for moderation, although the more prominent group names might get the interest of trolls for being bigger targets.
Perhaps you will think of some element of this little idea that gives the possibility of both monetisation and creating a system of moderation. Perhaps, for example, the groups membership lists have to be multisig with designated moderators. Moderators could then reverse their signatures and a membership is removed. If this power is based on whoever registers the name first, and can be transferred, or even some kind of way of splitting this power so you have founder, and then you have a board, who if they agree, can exercise the same power as the founder.
I think, after a little elaboration upon the idea, that I may be onto something here. This would enable a system of moderation, and would simply function as a p2p protocol implemented by programs that query the main blockchain but also interact with the SteemDNS system. If name owners are responsible and moderate their little plots well, they will attract larger numbers of posters and readership, and thus votes. If they exercise good discretion, it will result in upvotes for good group membership curation.
I think that the platform is simply too small and young for the need to be visible, but a it grows the need begins to increase. The 'mute' functionality is very poorly thought out, merely drawing attention to the muted posts, not making them silent.