Nihilist Takes on Msgivings and SBD payouts; Take another Look and See What You Think Now
What value did msgivings bring to the forum? Does the person behind it not “deserve” the SBD on account of cleverness? You and I voted, responded and decided there was value in that content. Users went for the curation rewards they anticipated without much thought/detective work.
I argue the posts brought a great deal of value: as people voted for curation, there was a lot of discussion in form of replies and counterposts, as well as spin-offs. The controversial nature of her topics stirred community activity. First msgiving's topics stirred things up, now the controversial nature of the account does. Very clever.
Disruptive, even ;)
I believe the name msgivings was likely not a coincidence, it's too fitting! Sure they made "a lot of" SBD, but compared to who? People who just signed up on Steem with high expectations? I believe it's just as likely the person behind msgivings intended to perform a social experiment as they intended to make cash.
What is my REAL problem?
Labour Theory of Value been knockin' on the door...wanted 3.50 SBD from me! Can you believe?!
Been around Steemit awhile and never noticed much in the vein of Marxism. I don't think anyone on Steem believes the labour theory of value is valid; until they think someone gets higher pay-outs then they "deserve."
Next problem:
The idea that people get what they deserve. Let me know when it happens to you and I'll do the same! It's always good, right?
“People deserve what they get; people should get what they deserve” is essentially religious (eeew!) It's an egregarious false-pretense. Try it...can you define “deserve” objectively? Without Scripture? Moralistic is the concept of fairness we all have, from children, we carry with us and think:
“S/he didn’t work [enough] for that”
Think I'm reaching with the Religiousity connection? Consider whether it's coincidence that terms like "Inquisition" and "Witch-Hunt" are the go-to descriptors of the subsequential processes ensued.
Is using an AI program plagiarism [aka theft]? I believe the virtue of 'writing your own work' comes from our educational institutions; since early grade school.
AI writing use is practiced online a lot. Whether we like it or not. Does that mean AI content is always low quality? I challenge someone to argue so without using Labour Theory of Value.
Is it the fear that machines will replace us? Wait...are we in fact Ol' fashioned? What else should we all do manually?
Ah, we hate to feel that we've been duped, deceived, cheated, robbed.
We had the impression and expectation that msgivings wrote word-for-word from their own mind. Is that Just thought? Or did we falsely assume; extrapolating from our environment and personal beliefs? On our own accord.
Msgivings:
Some labour involved after all. At least as much as many other people have put into ~300 word posts which got payouts +100$ which we don't, and shouldn't, be sore about.
You may believe the real issue is in the 'conspiracy' of the payout. I ask you please consider whether the thought came before or after msgivings posts were 'outed' as (mostly or completely) AI generated. Hindsight is deceptive (hindsight bias).
another underlying belief worth questioning is:
“I didn’t consent to people making money in this manner when I signed up/invested time in Steemit”
I believe that line undoes itself.
The recent controversy around @kushed and @honeyscribe is why I'm not shooting this suffering, half-dead horse of an issue yet. It's basically the same thing as complaints towards the other whales of steemit and Ned and Dan having multiple accounts.
There's good reasons to make a couple accounts. It's not upvote abuse because at some point everything could be 'upvote' abuse. Anyone upvoting a friend could be considered such (so long as they have the steem power to attract the attention). That's what people do. Can't do anything about that realistically. It's just mobbish to say @honeyscribe is doing anything shadey.
No one is this harsh towards people who make high profits off of ICOs, for being early adopters. Why does the SteemTeam get all that flak? Just a bias over pre-minings.
Things are unbalanced right now, sure. Entitlements and high expectations happen when we see others making the big steem bucks.
Take another look at people who cash-out high amounts of SBD; most are people, if not directly involved with Steemit, invested with a lot of time, posts, comments in the community or are involved in the larger crypto-sphere. It's unrealistic to expect people power up now, rather than try to make more money with the SBD they make with what the market is like atm. We can't claim to know others' intentions. Just because someone is "Steem-Poor" doesn't give them a halo (only the lovely @halo has a halo here)
Riddle me this:
How does Steemit fit with Your Appetite for Risk?
Risk of time; Risk of opportunity
The more risk you take the more potential for reward? Not guaranteed! Risk is subjective to personal situation; how much time you have on your hands now, later...in your entire life...what else you could do with your time, and would it be more profitable? You know how it goes.
Is using an A.I spinner as high risk as writing original content? Word-for-word; No. It may be a viable solution for some of Steemit's problems, for the same reasons it's used elsewhere. Maybe we shouldn't dismiss it so cavalierly?
Does making tons of money here have intrinsic long-term value (relating to success of the platform) regardless how a blogger does it?
I can't believe the amount of cynicism that comes out because of the Almighty Dollar!
Last thing...if you think we should begin to distribute Steem equally as possible, here is your required reading:
Thanks for reading! Thank you in advance for replying!
This post was crafted with 100% Organic Human-Generated Nihilism
For most people, it's kind of like playing the lottery with scratch-off tickets here. I'm talking the average user. You may or may not get some money, but you won't get ANY if you don't play. And, your chances of making money here by investing some time, thought, and energy into a post or comment is actually higher than winning money on the lottery. And, you get to play for free. :)
That's just fine by me, and makes me satisfied and happy writing here. I don't make as much here as I do with my freelance writing clients, but I mainly write here for fun, just as I play the lottery for fun. I sometimes get a small payout on the lottery, but I've easily made a dozen or more times more money on Steemit in the six weeks I've been here than I've ever made on all my lottery plays combined.
The larger accounts and the founders can do what they like. They created this platform and invested a ton of money in it. I don't begrudge them wanting to get the most out of it they are able. The fact I make some decent side cash here, too, is just icing on the cake for me.
I like the lottery comparison. There's no easy money. So the seconds it takes to get a ticket and the huge payoff definitely ends up being a "tax on the hopeful/poor"
The Steemit community is great and there's so many interesting posts and comments now, I think it's developing it's own value. Only time will tell us how the distribution of rewards will work out and if the majority of Steemit users with "blog, get paid" on a regular basis.
For the most part, I agree with your post. Only two objections.
First
There were some people (not myself) who figured out how to mine Steem even with all the scant details the team provided. In fact, they (Steemit) purposefully withheld information so that they could mine.
However, some of these early adopters were very clever and figured out how to do so despite the lack of information.
When Steemit's servers failed and a re-launch was underway -- under the assumption that Steemit wanted to be able to give away Steem in the form of Power to new users -- the rewards of some of these early miners were wiped clean. This was how the re-launch was justified. It's done and it has happened and some of the rewards / power from early mining provided to the Steemit devloper team and company employees, as well as other insiders, raises questions as to whether or not these accounts should be voting or not.
Second
We were all duped by @msgivings with respect to the plagiarism. It took quite a while to find it. I really enjoyed her content (and agreed with most of her views on the subject!) and thought it was great that there were indeed spin-offs and responses to her posts.
Personally, I believe that the initial looking into her account was due to the fact that some users did not agree with her viewpoints at all; maybe some users don't believe that women should be sexually liberated. I dunno, I can't speak for them, but that was my interpretation as to the initial cause of the investigations.
However, with that said, I do appreciate the fine detective work in rooting out plagiarism, which I do not actually believe benefits the platform, even if lots of formatting, citations of pictures were done to hide this, not to mention how original posts and discussions appeared!
I'll admit I don't know all the facts, in regards to the two points you mentioned. Especially the mining scenario. That does sound strange how it went down.
The Witch-Hunt comparison is def fitting, it was that ppl got pissed off MsGiv's was getting money writing stuff they didnt like and that she wouldnt engage in debate. it's good overall that msgivings was exposed. There's more good that came from it overall, the discussion over what is/isnt steemit abuse and plagiarism has the people who steward those things deciding on certain standards of what deserves flagging. It really pissed me off at first, but now I think that AI can be used to make posts quality posts without plagiarism, and we shouldn't be to quick to judge it as it can be the same as using any other resources (just as you can rewrite anyone eleses ideas as long as you do the proper citations) It's an extension of the general AI tech controversies.
I need to make sure I am doing more proper diligence. There was a reason for the re-launch due to an integer overflow bug.
Fortunately, @joseph does a good job detailing the history of public record in https://steemit.com/steem/@joseph/the-history-of-steem-steemit-launch-in-the-words-of-dan-larimer-from-the-early-launch-days .
I'd edit my comment above, but then your comment would seem strange, and we currently don't (currently) have a nice UI to see all edits from every post -- although, maybe we'll see that soon.
It is appreciated.
An edit function like that, with a UI for us muggles, would be a great feature. A powerful one in some ways.
No problem.
I've wanted an ability to see edits in the UI (and a save draft one) for awhile now. I only added it to the github repository recently though : https://github.com/steemit/steemit.com/issues/319
Thanks all who read an upvoted. And any readers in the future.
The personal side for me is:
I actually really enjoyed msgiving's content and all the controversy it stirred. Some anti-abortionists got really mad and yeah I completely admit that both amused and challenged me. Then I was inspired to write my own nostalgic-cathartic story on the topic, and I saw a few women really appreciated that I did that post, and it was a very vindicating outcome for me. all because of an AI 'bot' Go figure.
so with a critical-nihilist eye I learned from all that...
Value is subjective in some unseen ways. "Eye of the beholder" is only the tip of the iceberg
@msgivings wasn't bot-written. There was a real person (or people) behind that account. There was real plagiarism as well. I think many will be surprised (or not) to see who the culprits likely are. It will certainly spark further discussion, which - as you said - seems to be adding value, right?
I know there was a human behind it, more than one no...interesting. Yes that might add value.
Culprits...well, that's very police language.
I'm curious as hell who it was, yes.
Essentially, it just means "guilty party." It's not really "police language" - it's just a means of identifying.
In any case, I have a pretty good idea of who was responsible for @msgivings and hope to prove it with the available data.
I need an upvote to my steemit post. This is the link: https://steemit.com/steemit/@collin22000/how-to-make-your-child-smarter