RE: Today I learned Steemit had turned into an episode of The Walking Dead
Steemit has been like The Walking Dead for a while now. There are some live ones here and there, but it's mostly just writing for that whale bot vote. In fact, it's not really like TWD - but more like some twisted form of Skynet for blog curating. You have to be on the side of the machines...or you die.
If you get those early bot votes and their trails, your post will have a chance to earn. If not, you better just hope that a whale is around and feels like reading your post and upvoting it. It's the overabundance of automation that's really killing the atmosphere around here. It's the exact opposite of what this platform should be and how it was supposed to naturally raise the best to the top. I've mentioned this many times before and it is a real problem, but we're seeing more and more users move to automated voting, especially with prices and payouts declining.
If this trend continues, we're all eventually going to be writing for computer programs. As the better writers figure this out, they'll just leave. So, we'll be left with the mediocre writers and the spammers posting for robot rewards. That doesn't sound like a revolutionary idea and platform to me.
So sorry that everyone isn't getting thousand-dollar rewards anymore, but this wasn't supposed to be only about massive post payouts for saying "Hi!" or for sharing a few pictures of your latest vacation. Because honestly - I haven't seen many posts worth $100, let alone $1000 or $10,000. That includes my own.
So, let's make Steem and Steemit great again...or just great.
I have read this excellent post by @senseiteekay and every comment on this page and i choose your comment on which to come in. I totally agree with you @ats-david on the automated bot voting effect on this platform and this undoubted downward trend it has had in the quality of posts. As I think its clear to see that once you have managed to obtain your ticket to a whale vote curation list the motivation to put in real effort to a post is lost as any content of any nature is automatically upvoted and your reward is as good as in the bag without it being ever truly read or analyzed by a human being. I think this fact is still further proven by the fact that we see now many posts getting hundreds of votes and good rewards but with little more than 4 or five comments. As i see it the comment sections have become a wasteland and its very sad for me to see as these threads used to be a place of heated debate and exchange concerning the subject of the post in question as I recall. Surely this is a trend which will not push this community or Steemit.Inc to the place where it hoped to be .When i raise my concerns of this to others i generally get a reply to the tone of I don,t have time to spend my day sifting through thousands of posts to find ones on which I want to vote. So if this is true now, one can only imagine what would be the situation, when and indeed if thousands and even millions of more users come on board in the hopefully near future ? I think @senseiteekay is so right about sounding the alarm bell with his post on this subject and any debate on this matter clearly in hand is a healthy thing no ? We need now to get more crticical of this handing over of curation to the auto style non critical vote system. But with everything being so painfully transparent here I am sure many fear to be noticed as being " complaners "" or " haters " and so they will just as they have done so far hold their tongues for fear of being ostricised by the more " self satisfied " highly rewarded memebers of this community who are happy with their unending free ride to the tredning post spot on this platform. So to round this up Yes ! We Do Need Change and We Do Need to Make Steemit Great Again and Yes We Can !!! If we decide to take the thing back into our own hands away from this auto self destruct system of non reading of content here on Steemit !! Steem On Nonetheless @senseiteekay and @ats.david )
That last part sounded like a Donald Trump line :D
Joking aside, you're completely right. People aren't working as hard to create content as they used too because a lot of them, and I'm talking about the 70 rep guys right now, have guaranteed votes. Others think they'll get automatic votes just for upvoting someone else. And then you've got the people who post click-bait content and hope some whale has a fat finger that day.
It's saddening to see because when I first came here, it was all about making this place great. Everyone was on board with each other, and you can see this through how vigilant we are when it comes to plagiarism. Now it seems that the enthusiasm that once was building us all up is gone, and instead has been replaced with this recession mentality that has us struggling for votes.
I feel like an even bigger problem here is that there's not enough whales, and that's been a problem since day one. There aren't enough whales that spend their day upvoting content that they enjoy. What I do see from whales at the moment is an upvoting trend based on curation guilds they're part of. As you said, you gotta get those early bot votes and their trails.
I'm hoping that maybe we, as a community, can come together and become a bit more diverse again. Diversity creates value, especially in an attention-based economy. Maybe if we bring back the diversity, we can see some trendy people come along that have big pockets. More trendy whales might make a difference. For now us minnows and dolphins can make a difference by creating original content. Who cares if it's quality so long as it's original and appeals to audiences.