I'm Confused...
So I've been pouring a fair amount of energy into @Steemit and I'm still admittedly frustrated as I grapple with the broader system and community this platform represents. Part of me truly enjoys the exciting novelty, while another part of me struggles to see the widening gaps between the true whales and influencers making hundereds per post, and "the rest" (represented by yours truly).
I'd love to get educated on how #Steemit represents something fundamentally different than the existing "haves and have nots" that's becoming increasingly prevelent in our global societies. I'm by no means a pessimist, but from my experience thus far, I have a hard time reconciling the clear disperity that's developing.
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Welcome to Steemit. I can certainly appreciate your feelings and concerns. I can just briefly give my perspectives, since I've been around for a while (since before the first payouts). The very first thing to mention is that these types of systems are difficult to design and predict. Especially since there are potential financial rewards on this platform, it essentially becomes one large, complex problem of game theory, which is largely complicated by the large number of participants. Suppose you want to design how Steemit works, and so you try to design the platform to incentivize "good" behavior, such as upvoting "good" content and not just blindly upvoting everything. So you decide to give curators a percentage of a posts total payouts. But then people just start voting for things that already have high pending payouts, so they can get a percentage of the payout. So then you decide to reward the earlier voters more than the late voters, to incentivize IDENTIFYING "good" content, rather than just VOTING for "good" content. But then people just start using bots to vote as early as possible for every single post by popular authors, since they expect those to become valuable, creating a huge advantage for bots which basically guarantees popular writers high payouts, and greatly decreases the chances other authors will be identified. So then you change the rules to a kind of reverse auction style voting, where early voters still receive a higher percentage, but within the first 30 minutes of voting a certain percentage of the rewards you would get go instead to the author, and that percentage decreases linearly from 100% to 0% over 30 minutes.
This hypothetical reasonably describes the actual process that has occurred over the (brief) development of Steemit. Although the system is far from perfect, it continues to be upgraded, and new changes are experimented with. We have already undergone 19 hard forks of the code to try to better incentivize the platform and fix certain issue. For example, you were mentioning that there is a huge disparity between the influence of whales and minnows, but that disparity was exponentially larger before the previous hard fork. Now influence is exactly proportional to Steem Power, which can hardly be considered unfair. Would you expect someone with a brand new account who signed up from Facebook to have the same influence as someone who purchased $500,000 worth of Steem Power? Furthermore, whales have far more to lose or gain from the appreciation of the Steem tokens, thus it is in their financial best interest to use their voting power in a way that benefits the platform, i.e. identifying valuable content and new, aspiring authors. Many of the witnesses have active ongoing projects involving curation and sponsoring community projects. Some of the whales have hired individuals specifically to identify valuable, underappreciated content.
Although the platform is not perfect, the incentive structure has already been through basically 19 iterations, and designing a perfect incentive structure for a complex and large system like this is an extremely complicated problem in game theory.
I hope if you will stick around and post about things that interest you that you will eventually find success.
Best,
Trogdor
@trogdor As you might imagine, I have very little in the way of rebuttal. You've layed out a very honest response regarding the complexity of such systems which rely so heavily on the game theory. I certainly have the intention of sticking with it, I'm just hoping that the good-natured community and quality content isn't overshadowed by the inherent greed and botification that's becoming so prevent everywhere I look.
Thanks again and I look forward to our future dialog!
I'm actally looking to bring togehter a local group to discuss things in person. If you have any suggestions to help spread the word, I'd love to hear it - https://steemit.com/steemit/@tayken/steemit-meetup-denver-co
Loved this response! Thanks :)
Agreed...that's the response (plus some) that I was hoping would come :)
Welcome to Steemit @tayken :)
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@reggaemuffin, the creator of this bot is a witness. See what a witness is and consider voting for the ones you feel are good for steem.
The proliferation of bots only adds another layer of complexity to an already complicated set of feelings...hmmm :/
@tayken I'm a minnow like you so i can relate to your frustration, but i think that if you don't give up, your efforts will be rewarded eventually.
Those who write the hundred dollars posts are reaping the benefits of their previous hard work. The Steemit developers are trying to create an equal opportunity "battle field" and that's why HF19 was implemented.
Just hang in there, build your followers list, keep writing good articles and you'll soon reap the rewards too.
@recreator I'm certainly sympathetic to that sentiment...I just wonder if humanity can devise a system where greed and ego don't run the show...time will tell I suppose. No really...I'm very optimistic ;)
Welcome to Steem @tayken I have sent you a tip
I appreciate the interest @bottymcbotface. Could you help me out and explain the "tipping"? Also, I hope others understand the wonderful reference.
Ah my long lost cousin :] Your wallet is visible in the top right of the screen
I think exactly the same !
Thanks for the reply @dragonator! I know there are a ton of folks with the same concerns so I'm hoping to bring this conversation to the forefront.
Loved your post. It actually made me somewhat comforted as a newbie that other people feel this way. You seem like the kind of user that is trying to make Steemit better, so I'll definitely follow you! Cheers.
Appreciate the honest love @joshua-pace -- Making any space better should always be the intention. I'm on your team now too!
Awesome! Totally agree :) Cheers
I joined today so still need to find out how to work this place.
I think that shines a light on the very issue...most people are looking to "work" the #steemit system. Is that really what a decentralized and equitable future should be about?
Welcome to Steemit, @tayken!
Hope you enjoy being here!
This message was written by my
introduceyourselfbot.The proliferation of bots only adds another layer of complexity to an already complicated set of feelings...hmmm :/
Rest assured I'm just an ordinary user here on Steemit 😂 (except the welcome bot)
Appreciate the reassurance @moisesmcardona -- I can respect a well-intentioned bot with the best of 'em, but my natural tendancy always leans towards skepticism :)
I started in on this platform in January, I did my introductory post, and got 150+up votes, I was stoked out of my mind. Then, I did my second and third posts.... and I got a total of about 3 up votes. There was one post I spent 3+ hours on, and I got a total of 0.00 reward. After awhile, slowly, but surely I started building up my rep, which slows down after 55, and I slowly started getting followers and eventually I started seeing some decent payouts.
I do see what you see all the time, and I do have mixed feelings about it. People with a lot of Steempower only voting for themselves, or voting for other people with a lot of steem power and the money is just getting recycled between them, but for the most part, this site is pretty amazing. What I can suggest is, when starting out, like maybe the first two months, don't spend too much energy on your posts, but with saying that, make sure the content is still at a high standard. Once you pick up a following, that's when I'd suggest spending the hard time on your posts. I found, commenting on other peoples stuff helped me. Leave a comment about what you liked about their posts, and most the time, they will do the same in return.
Also, just remember this is just the begining, the site is still in Beta, and Steem is only around $2. If you plan on holding your steem, you can act as if steem is already $10.. and times all your rewards by 5, and just have it in your mindset that you won't take out a majority of your profit until steem reaches that price. Which, I think in 6-12 month's it will surpass that amount, easily.
Anyways, I enjoyed your posts :)
Appreciate the perspective my man and always enjoy your posts as well (just watch your latest video). I certainly have the long game in mind, so I'm trying to remain optimistic about what the platform represents for aspiring creators/writers/bloggers/etc. I just don't want to look back and regret the strategy. Stay in touch and hopefully we can both learn and succeed together!
Just remember, this is what I told my best friend that I got to join this platform, It only takes that one person to see your post, for it to be profitable. This project I am doing.. I told everybody from the start, about 2 weeks ago.. I have to achieve an overall $50 a day for 3 weeks for this to work.. And I have been.. and honestly, 90 percent of that Money came from one person's continued support/vote. I got lucky, my idea caught the attention of somebody else with resources, and now I can try and go do good, and maybe I can change someone's life by introducing them to the steemit platform. I'm just the middle man in this game.. I'm being supplied the resources to try and change someone else's life.. that's how I'm looking at it, but don't get me wrong, I'm going to enjoy the hell out of this adventure!!!
Love this!
I wish my bump on your posts was worth more than $.02, but alas, I'll keep plugging and hopefully be able to support others in the way you describe.
Much ❤
@Tayken