7 Steemit questions, but there's more.
I have a few questions for the Steemit rules enthusiasts about the future here.
1: If a country joins Steemit and powers up massively is that a good thing?
2: What if they create several accounts powered up and upvote only the content that supports them and the trending tab is filled with xyz's propaganda?
3: What happens if they start down voting and flagging what they see as negative content into oblivion?
4: Are there limits for power up? What happens if a country/person powers up 10 million? 100 million? or more? Is it possible within the system and how does the system/community cope?
5: Can the Steemit community be hijacked by super rich or governments?
6: If it can, will we know about it or could it be done covertly over time?
7: Can it remain an 'uncensored' platform if this happens?
I ask these (and there are many more similar) as there are many new people coming in to the platform and as interest builds further, it is almost inevitable that malevolent forces will try to control or use the platform in who knows what ways. I am just curious as to what that means and if there are some kinds of contingencies for these kinds of events.
If anyone can shed some light, feel free to comment.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
I have asked myself much the same. I would be more concerned with a corporate or Intelligence community control than a country. I suppose many things are likely. I have already seen things that if done in a concerted manner, in an organized fashion could make Steemit unusable for, at least, short periods of time. It would have to be subtle or the community would flag it into obscurity, unless the amount invested is more than the flaggers control. It could be gamed out in a tagged category with volunteers. I'm not sure how else one would form a sub-steemit for game testing.
Incidentally, there was no huge power up, but a country did, at one time join Steemit.
https://steemit.com/@lordstarr
why a country ? Why not a Facebook or Google itself ? They could see it as a hedge against their own disruption: 200 million market cap is pocket change for them!
What if some savvy Unicorn manager starts to quietly buy up STEEM ? Hell, some of them could afford to do so with this year's personal stock options...
That in itself is not too problematic, it will capitalise STEEM.
Should they be allowed to POWER UP 100 %. though .
Maybe STEEM POWER should be capped eventually at some point: say a fixed fraction % of the available STEEM so no one entity can have undue influence ...
They could buy STEEM now, let it develop and switch their whole user base to it. They themselves know for damn sure that the ad model is on its last legs... There are plenty of clever Tom's working on moonshots. Would not surprise me to know if they are working on their own crypto currency version. Might just buy out the whole STEEM ecosystem eventually as a ready made system (God there's a depressing thought, no doubt they'd f*ck it up!!)
As far as I can see, Facebook and Google are just intelligence community fronts, or they are heads of the same beast.
I think the SP cap is a decent idea for keeping balance. If these manipulative entities buy enough steem they could crash the price at a critical time of their choosing to promote their own, fully manipulated cryptocurrency. I've already seen some evidence for manipulation, though it could just be the profit takers and the day traders f*cking up crypto prices with short term thinking.
Eventually, I think things will become too chaotic for even the best of controllers to maintain. It could lead to a control freak 'black Monday', with all the control freaks leaping from windows in panic from the loss of control. I hope I get to see it. We're a long way from anything like that. The NSA is several orders of magnitude larger than Steemit right now. The willing slaves are too numerous.
When I say country I mean intelligence community for the nefarious side and there is no budget too big for them.
I actually think @lordvader is Zuckerberg in disguise casing the joint. Remove your mask Vader, remove your mask.
Zuckerberg might just be a cylon.
Good questions! What if the next Trump corners the STEEM market and starts to blast his message and upvoting it ? How about all these "no censorship" fans, will they support that if the next Trump looks more like a Hillary who by the way , probably also had a cool billion or so to play with in the campaign funds) can the steemit.com model be brute force hacked by buying it? The defense against this is probably a seriously higher price of STEEM . .
Save steem now.
cool questions, want too learn as well
Well, for once many governments are looking to convert currencies to blockchain based currencies, I was recent about Putin reaching out to the Ethereum founder to make a digital currency, even UAE has consensys on it.
Everybody is saying "Putin asked Vtalik to make a currency"... all they did is meet! Putin may have simply wanted to ask him a few questions to understand the technology better. Or something else entirely.
Yes, so they are likely to play with their new currencies and see what mischief they can get up to, right?
Most likely yea.
WOW, so fucking great questions. Can I make a translation of this post to my spanish community?
Sure. Or... Si
THANKS!. Or... ¡GRACIAS!
I want to discuss this with my people but all the ideas that I want to express just came up in spanish. However, it is a good topic.
Yes, all you need to do is buy in and get large influence to do what you want. When problems present themselves that affect the majority of the platform in negative way, then a solution will be implemented by the code or some community effort. So other whales presumably would get involved if it negatively affects the price of Steem... hehe. Preventing this from happening won't be put into place as code I don't think.
Thanks.
There are obvious benefits for a city or country to be on here that are good for both like for tourism purposes or promoting big events but it seems very easy to game with enough money. And I don't have a lot of faith in the governments not to try.
Pass it off as some necessary public-good purchase?
PUBLIC GOODS
Purchasing Cryptocurrency .................. $50 000 000
LOL
Geez, better than what they normally do with taxpayer's money ;D
Great list of questions Taraz! I would be very interested to see what kind of responses you get! There seem to be a lot of unanswered questions floating around and at some point they are going to have to be answered!
Thanks for sharing this!
I think as it develops answers will come. I can't imagine developers being able to predict all ways it can be exploited.
By definition I'd say they can't predict how it is going to evolve... it is a complex socio technical system. The behaviour in the system depends on the systems' conditions and inherent incentives.
From what I've seen so far, a lot of these incentives are very well considered,
and dynamically updated after observing if the desired behaviour in achieved.
Is Steemit.com and the STEEM market resilient enough, to survive serious messing about by someone or something with deep pockets?
Time will tell : the biggest advantage is that this platform is currently below everybody's radar. It has great potential to go exponential so it will become too big too fast (say 3 years) to mess about easily.
The interim will be interesting:
You can be sure that the recent crypto boom has raised awareness that this phenomenon is here to stay and many people are likely to be scheming to get as big of piece of the action as they can get.
But I'm not too worried... like the internet in the beginning most corporate types have no clue and are too focussed on their own game.
They might put in a some money trying to buy their way in, like poker that just sweetens the pot for everyone.
The thing with "big corporations" or "them"is that most often they don't behave that intelligently ...
But there will definitely be attempts to exploit it without doubt. I myself find it difficult to believe that Facebook was the sole idea of one young guy that has ultimately become the worlds greatest information gathering platform without thinking to myself that perhaps that was the intended plan all along so I am very cautious about what we are being sold and the true consequences of buying in to it completely. The powers that be in the world seem to have a great way of making us want and enjoy the things that are detrimental to us so I always try to keep in mind that when some things seem too good to be true they often are. I still see great possibilities for this place though I now realise that there is always going to be a power differential and that could grow as things evolve or devolve in the real world!
Hope all is well!
meep
Forgive me my friend @ionlysaymeep! I have been busy and not had the chance to stop by and say hello! I hope you are enjoying your new celebrity status thanks to our friend @kus-knee! :)
meep
All is well. That space between may aleays exist. I wonder if it is better to by powerful and help from there or be weak and have a clearer heart. I think both positions have their strengths and faults.
I have just been speaking with @dwinblood and he has been explaining a little bit to me. He seems a wise man when it comes to the workings of steemit and I am glad of his advice.Perhaps there is no escaping power and influence no matter where we go or what we do so we must always be in a position to be able to fight or resist that power. Or as he put it
:)
He is like a sage at times. Other times a thorn ;)
This is what I mean with whivh is tge better position. I tgink the one of power had the most potential to help but gaining power is not pretty nor staying in power. Plus, the potential to be corrupted by it may increase.
And I would not be so naive to think that I am not corruptable in some way so it is not easy to come to the realisation that in order to have an effect we must attempt to gain some power for ourselves. A sobering thought!
Perhaps pride really is a sin in that it stops us from doing what we know we must do in order to affect change and leaves us in a state of constant self denial. Since seeing the movie Seven with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman and realising that pride was regarded as a sin I have tried to be as unconcerned with pride as is possible but this is an almost impossible task especially in a world where pride is generally seen as a good thing! In a world where our value system is deliberately being inverted and our psyche is being controlled in numerous ways it is no surprise to me to find that pride and cognitive dissonance are great tools of control and two things we must overcome in trying to affect change here.
A very good set of questions, I am also eager to see what people have to say here. As steemit is increasing at such a rapid (or even exponential) rate there is no doubt that innovation will be required along the way.
Here is my post, the translation to spanish of this original post. If anyone wants to comment or give their oppinion, it could also be in spanish my post. Thanks @tarazkp.
hello Taraz-- nice to find a Steemit original- i found you on team Australia and am aussie too - i upvoted and am following you and enjoyed your article - i reckon we could take over Steemit if we all try hard enough --haha-David