Steemit: The Whale Gossip Column Of Privileged Authors Competing for Whale Nipple
Last night, I had a long conversation with a "boss of Steem" who chooses to remain anonymous. The discussion was about the lopsided problem of a few authors making a killing while others make nothing. I explained if this continues, Steemit will remain what it is now, a Steemit/Whale gossip column.
Steemit should be a source for members to read each day because brilliant content rises to the top. At the moment, the privileged authors and articles about Steemit and whales are dominating the top of the list. It may not be a bad idea to prohibit blogging about Steemit and whales.
I'm not speaking as one of the persons who is not being notices. I am doing really well on Steemit and all my articles trend and make money. I fully believe in my content and the comments prove people are digging my post. However, I can't help but feel the unfairness to the unnoticed authors. I see many very good posts that make nothing and deserve to earn what I'm earning.
I understand the desire to attract popular and famous authors. It's just as important to provide the opportunity for any person to publish a good article and make bank. If this is allowed to happen, masses will flock to Steemit just as they do Reddit.
When speaking to the "Boss of Steemit," I explained the way to make money and be noticed is to blog about Steemit. Steemit content is boring to read. I can barely make it through one paragraph. People want to read wild, crazy, new, smart and fresh material. Steemit love quarrels and whale divorces possess neither of these qualities.
I'm totally for any plan that will allow an unknown author to have just as much of a chance as myself. I could be giving away money by supporting such a plan. However, I care more about a fair source to publishing content that allows the best to rise to the top.
I'll pitch in whatever is required to give others the same chance I have. I have tried to think of ways I could give unnoticed authors some of my money but my voting power only pays pennies.
I am certain others are noticing these Steem Illuminati maneuvers. If something isn't implemented to end the favoritism, Steemit is destined to become a hot spot for privileged authors who publish articles to gain attention from the whales instead of the masses.
I must give props to some of the privileged authors who are creating fabulous content. They have spent many years dedicating their lives to blogging and building their fans and brands. These power authors deserve to have every dollar they make.
After publish edit:
It is improper to get mad at the authors who make a lot of money on Steem. We should all be glad for them. Anything less is jealousy. It is proper to direct the anger at the unfair Steem platform that is seemingly not interested in paying attention to unknown authors. There is enough money to pay unknown authors for good content and to pay the power authors excellent money. Everyone should have a fair chance to earn big on a great piece of content.
Also, Steemit is in the beta stage so problems like these are understandable. The whales deserve credit for investing their money and time creating such a cool platform. Even if I were not earning any money, I would much rather post my content here than on Facebook. Props for that.
About the author: Barry Cooper
"You may have seen him on the pages of Maxim, or during one of his many appearances on CNN, Fox News and Spike TV. He’s the cop who turned against the drug war. In American pop culture right now, there’s nobody quite like him. As one of the former top drug cops working the Texas highways, he was ferocious, bringing down hundreds of people for possessing even tiny amounts of an illegal substance. In his new life as an anti-prohibition crusader and activist filmmaker, he’s just as ferocious, but now it’s his former colleagues in law enforcement who are sweating his intimidating gaze…Cooper is on a mission to free America’s pot prisoners and take down the abusive cops he once sought to emulate. In the terminology of war, Barry is an insurgent, lobbing bombs into the fourth estate as his form of penance for all the people he put behind bars on drug offenses.” —True/Slant
Barry Cooper has received global attention by being reported in over 700 newspapers and magazines including Rolling Stones, High Times, a feature in Maxim Magazine and a front cover feature in Cannabis Culture Magazine and the Texas Observer. He has been a guest on numerous radio shows and every cable news channel including MSNBC Tucker Carlson, FOX Geraldo At Large, ABC I Caught, NBC Mike and Juliet Morning Show and NPR’s, This American Life. He has also appeared as drug and legal expert in five episodes of SPIKE TV’s reality show, MANSWERS. Barry recently starred with Woody Harrelson, 50 Cent, Eminem and Susan Sarandon in the anti drug war documentary, “How To Make Money Selling Drugs.” The movie features Barry freeing prisoners.
“Barry was even better than he says he was. He had a knack for finding drugs and made more arrests and more seizures than all of the other agents combined. He was probably the best narcotics officer in the state and maybe the country during his time with the task force.” –Tom Finley, Commander Permian Basin Drug Task Force
While as an author, I publish my content for the love of publishing and writing, I would LOVE to receive more interactions from people. I know that I am not some low-grade author, and I know that I have many interesting topics to cover, but there just isn't much interaction. The money aspect is really great, but its a bonus to me where I seek to enliven people's days with a great poem or story, or to enrich their thoughts with knowledge and to hear feedback in the form of questions and criticism. I've noticed that with just upvoting creating the rewards (if your comments get upvotes you get rewards too) it tends to have many people just upvoting and not even reading. Any ideas on how to eliminate that and create a community that is more involved with itself? I know that some authors, like yourself, receive much interaction - but its also because of how much their posts are making giving people incentive to post "Great article, thanks!" while receiving some legitimate input from interested readers, but largely I do not see that happening - perhaps its just my perspective, its my experience certainly.
author can set a test question that relate to the content, and the voter must answer the question to vote
I dig this idea. That way you would have to read the whole article and understand it.
something a bot can't do
Exactly!!
That's a great idea, but I'm afraid that curators would simply choose to not vote and move to the next post with trending potential. As a result, authors would simply stop posting a test question because they'd be afraid of getting no votes and not being seen...still.
I've been saying this since my first real view of the system: It all starts with the whales. If they don't take it upon themselves to more equitably distribute the rewards to quality writers, then it won't happen. As it stands right now, even if it's not true, the perception is that they'd rather use their bots and reward a select few users...and themselves for what most people are apparently seeing as sub-par content. They have the ability to make or break this platform. Right now, there are a lot of people who think it's broken. I'm not one of them - yet - but I'm not going to say that it isn't trending that way. Because I think it is.
Just look at the top trending posts right now. Five of the top 10 are directly about Steemit, and a couple others are closely related. That's a real problem.
Upvoted your comment because I like this discussion. Not sure if I agree or not, but it's a nifty idea.
That's a pretty good idea, I like that.
You're a good writer @alchemage. And your comments here are spot on.
I started just upvoting friends for a bit, but started to realize it's not really a way to continue with integrity. Now, if I upvote, it's because I read it and appreciate the content, even if I disagree. In some cases, I read and appreciate the content, but also think that the article has already been paid as much or more than it's worth. In that case, I might comment without upvoting, which, in my mind, is a personal upvote as well. I do upvote my own comments too, because I can. :P
Thank you @anotherjoe.
When I first came to #Steemit, I operated in the same manner that you mentioned. I had a two week break of madness IRL that I had to deal with and when I came back I realized that I need to expand my sights and have been consciously seeking new authors of good content. Like yourself, I too upvote only on those articles which I have read and appreciate, and I do my best to comment on the ones I upvote as well - though sometimes the content is not of such that I have a vast knowledge on, or cannot fully wrap my head around, and have nothing to say other than "Great article, thanks!" (hahaha) so I just stay silent.
This small article is the proof to the main argument of his article. He just received over 500$ in just under an hour for a few words that many and many people have already said before. @barrycooper I am not trying to take off any credit that you might have earned, but if this article made it up to 500$+ in under an hour and A story I've spent many hours on building brought me less then 3$ https://steemit.com/fiction/@kuriko/in-the-eyes-of-danger-chapter-2-looking-into-the-eyes-of-a-monster
I can't seem to see how we are going in the right direction. I am not really into complaining but I hardly understand if people even read what they upvote. In any case your article is the living proof of the issue you seem to point, I am barely motivated to continue on steemit myself and I am sure i'm not the only one. It all goes back to whales running after known people.
I enjoyed this article of you https://steemit.com/barrycooper/@barrycooper/how-to-bust-cops-free-a-mother-from-federal-prison-and-escape-the-united-states I though you did deserve the reward to such a unique story, but a lot of whales are still exclusively running after big names like you and this is mostly why , I won't make it far in here.
I have a post that took me 3 months to complete (Here), and really is still in progress as the experiment is still in works, and it only made $0.18. Frankly, as an author, I am more upset that only one person commented than only making $0.18. I think that the more that you worry about making money off of your posts the more you are going to stress and the more it is going to appear in not only your content but in your curation and comments. If you focus on creating a community that fully interacts with itself then the funding will follow. Don't let others making money and you not making money discourage you to continue on, as others have pointed out - this site is very new, its still in its beta phasing even! I'll be sure to check out your articles. :)
I think a big problem with the platform now is discover-ability. This platform is literally flooded with information at an increasing rate, yet short of feeds it is kind of all dumped in one bucket. If they add being able to subscribe to tags and do something similar to feeds I think it could help. I am sure I've missed some really good posts just because I looked at them and realized I couldn't commit time to be objective about their piece at that time. The majority though it is because I simply never discovered them. It is in beta and I do know this will improve, and any platform with a lot of content coming up with discover-ability algorithms is tough. Think about how youtube, Amazon, and other places make suggestions to you of things you might like. This platform will likely have content flowing onto it way faster than either of those sites. This is a very tricky problem, and I do think that is why you didn't get more comments. YET Qualifier added as I am off to read your article now.
I really like your ideas about discoverability. And I absolutely agree, I've lost a few great articles for not having the energy or time to devote to the article I feel is necessary, then to think of how many I've just never even crossed is almost unfathomable. #betawillgetbetter Thank you for your input. I personally do not know much about developing algorithms, though I can assume it takes time to really zero it in.
I agree with you, yet there is also some value that people like you and I also get to comment and our comments are easier to see and perhaps get people reading them that normally wouldn't due to the extra visibility of @barrycooper's post. I do think it needs to spread around and I've seen people write some great things that got $0.00 or perhaps the $0.01 my vote was worth. I get it. Yet there are often other factors involved that can be beneficial as well. I tend to vote on small posts for people like @barrycooper because I know they have a bigger voice than I do (analogy). My vote is not worth much, if it were I'd still vote for people like Barry unless it was a crappy post, but I would use the slider and likely not award my max amount. As each of us get more power we further spread out the ability to find an uplift more great content. It is slow, but causing this redistribution in a non-organic natural way would be putting power into someones hands to decide who gets this. To some degree whale upvoting already is this, yet they are largely the creators and earliest adopters of the platform so I am uncertain how they could have completely avoided that without nerfing and potentially corrupting the entire system. I do think this problem we are describing is going to improve. I've been here a month and I've already seen quite a few changes.
@Kuriko You read my post so you know I admitted it's unfair that unknown authors are not being rewarded for good content. This does not mean I am being overpaid and you should not judge me for making the money I deserve. You should judge the unfair platform of Steem. I spent more than an hour on this post. I spent 11 years blogging, producing films and busting cops. During this time, I built a brand and fan base that made me popular. Because of my choice to be a humanitarian, I lost everything I had...including my family. Last year, I was alone in Mexico sleeping on a floor for a month. I am rebuilding and just now back on my feet. It's wrong to decide if payouts are the proper amount or not. It's proper to be upset if others are not paid the same. That's what's happening on Steem. I read the article you posted above and I am tenderly and sincerely trying to help you when I say there is another reason your writing is not doing well. It's fiction bro. You have to know this isn't a site where fiction will do good. Perhaps you should write an ebook and offer it for sale. Peace to you and I hope you find a platform where people want to read fiction. You are a good fiction writer.
@barrycooper I agree with the premise of your article and most definitely that no one should be able to judge if what you make on a piece is appropriate or not. As you know, writing is a craft and one that you clearly have been working at for years. Some fiction on here is doing well, but like anywhere else, it must be well crafted.
When I don't do well on an article and I've not done spectacular on any of them, I take into account my newness on the platform. I also take a hard look at the writing style I've used and the writing style of those who do better. I know full well that I can have a thousand people read, but they have to actually like it to get the majority of upvotes.
Some may upvote cause they sort of like it and have seen me around. An act of kindness. If I don't write well, I need to own up and take some ownership of the need to improve.
@shadowspub, I am impressed with our attitude and willingness to adjust and adapt. With a positive and sincere personality, I'm positive you will find your rhythm here. Thanks for the maturity. Big love.
I've actually been working on good commenting and I'm starting to see better interactions with those users where I post. I'm trying to build a community with my own followers and those that I follow. I think it might be working. The last few days have gone fairly well overall - gained quite a few followers and I'm starting to get better feedback on posts.
Nice! I hope the trend continues for you!
I get great interactions on the posts on where I am commenting, heh, but few of them reciprocate. Perhaps I need to be more consistent? :P
I'm fortunate to have @anotherjoe on my follow list, so he certainly helps with the interactions. A lot of my posts are centered around my business relationships (with coffee farmers), so that could be a factor as well. About 60% or more of adults drink it. But yeah - I hope the trend does continue. It's good to know that at least some people have read my posts and enjoy the subject matter and my delivery of it.
I think I was in a dialog with you (perhaps related to religion and science). I do engage in those sometimes. I can tell you when I am posting on a topic like that I need to be in the right frame of mind as it often tends to be that anyone coming at it from a religious perspective gets a ton of up votes, while I am likely sitting there at zero. I do have some great discussions, but that gives the strong impression of talking to people that absolutely 100% have made up their mind. I am not such a person. I debate in civility with people I disagree with because that is when I learn the most. I don't change my views on faith, that will not sway me, but my views do change with such discussions. I respect the freedom of religion and I am certain I had some dialog with you. I wanted you to know I probably will again, but I can only handle talking to people that have an unwavering viewpoint when I am in the right frame of mind. I am not saying that was you, that simply was the type of discussing where I believe our paths crossed.
Hang in there. Steem / Steemit is a very great creation. I believe you'll have more and more dialog as time goes on. We are small in numbers at the moment when you compare us to existing social media. This is not a bad thing while it is in beta. It also gives you a head start on building up steem power and followers.
Yes, we did have such a conversation. :)
I too debate with an open mind, but there has to be new information or a new perspective presented for me to even think about changing my stance. In our conversation I felt no new information was presented and that we were talking about the same things using different words, so I agreed to disagree. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation though, a healthy debate between two or a group of people allows for wondrous amounts of growth - even if its not on the topic discussed.
I appreciate your support very much.
I agree there does need to be different information. It was my hope that for others that there was some new perspectives. :) Anyway, hang in there... you've got a good mind and were civil. Those are two great things. You will have other good dialogs, and some of them may even be with me. :)
Great point. I've started to make a conscious effort to properly engage with the fiction that people are posting because, otherwise, there isn't going to be a community, there isn't going to be a genuine audience for real writing and authors will drift elsewhere.
I will follow you
Barry, appreciate your posts, and I think you have articulated concerns that many have. However, I think concerns stem from a misunderstanding of the current development state that Steemit is in. It is just now in the initial launch phase. IMO the issue of lesser known talent not getting adequate exposure will not persist as Steemit gets further along in its development to a more steady-state phase.
I think of it this way: Steemit is setting up a an ecosystem......a large shopping mall complex if you will. The first thing that needs to happen is to attract the big, well-known box stores as anchors to the eco-system so that the traffic they pull can then in fact spill over to the smaller mom/pop stores in the ecosystem.
If we did the opposite and instead, started by populating the mall with a few small, not so well known, mom/pop stores who have little ability to pull traffic on their own, the entire ecosystem will soon fail.
Of course in this scenario, the big box stores are the well known writers and personalities with large followings. The smaller stores, are the lesser known talent that are looking for exposure. So, currently the problem is that a lot of that great but lesser known talent has set up on shop in our "mall" a bit early and there is not quite enough traffic to help them get the exposure they need. Meanwhile the "whales" are (correctly in my opinion) giving a lot of attention to the more well known talent to help them feel comfortable and happy in this shiny new "mall" of ours, since they know that in time these bloggers will be the foundations of a great and thriving platform that helps to lift us all.
Before we bringing in all the animals of the forest, Steemit needs to plant some trees.
Great analogy!
you are buying into the Steemit discourse, that this is just something temporary,
its because the beta, its because its early, its because we need more traffic.
NO, ITS NOT BECAUSE OF THAT.
it is because the system here is STRUCTURALLY RIGGED,
and if it is rigged from the begining you can count on the fact rigging creates more rigging exponentially
NOT LESS.
I am one of those authors, I don't do AWFUL, but not viral for sure, I cannot seem to get over that hump and I dont want to be begging whales for votes every time I post. My stuff is good!
@catherinebleish I just scanned and read almost all your posts. You are not kidding. Your blogs are awesome. I'm sorry you only earn a few pennies per blog. As a show of my post's sincerity, I am going to give you 25% SD of whatever this post makes. You deserve more but I have a large crew to pay. Peace and love and keep blogging.
Awesomeness!!!
That's awesome! Upvoted if only to give @catherinebleish some more love! Very kind of you to do @barrycooper :)
You got me as a follow based on this. Very cool! :)
Oh my, that is the nicest thing. I am so grateful, thank you. Sincerely.
I think this is how people get noticed, by merely engaging. I just checked out your blog, it is good. You may have only gotten a few pennies before but now on your posts I'll hit you up with an extra 10 cents :-). It's not much but it's all I can do.
Upvoted and following too.
No way ever I would beg for anything . I understand how you feel. I just followed you.
When I saw you were on here, I followed you right away, because you've had "a reputation for principled activism" since at least 2003. I think that one reason why sites like this "game the system" is that the originators can't stand the idea that they will lose control of their own baby. They have no confidence in emergence yielding a benevolent result, because they view "democracy" the way Mencken did. (If I'm wrong, I apologize: it's just my first impression.)
This means that massive emergence is less likely to work, or can't work, for people like you and I.
Designing the rules for benevolent sortition requires significant thought, of the type most people are not familiar with. For example, if "ten guilty people are to walk free, rather than one innocent person be punished" (as per Blackstone's sage advice), then any single member of the jury can "hang the jury." ...Far better than allowing a "simple majoritarian vote" from the jury.
I'm not suggesting a "stacked sortition" for upranking, but perhaps a sortition that divides all steempower equally amongst all upvoted content for each day. (More socialistically egalitarian, but not exactly fair to the whales. Then again, perhaps it benefits the whales, because the appearance of egalitarianism draws in a huge migration or #Milogration from Twitter.)
Also: it might be interesting to add a link page here that, when clicked on, allows referred users from Twitter and Facebook to "start with additional steempower." It could say "Congratulations! You were referred to Steem by an existing Steem user! If you click the Join Steemit button on this page, you will start out with $30 of steempower, as opposed to the $5 you would start out with if you click the sign-up button on the homepage!" (This would then reward those who actively recruited from FB and Twitter, increasing the total steem in the system, as a proof-of-stake, as I understand it.)
In any case, I minnow, will try to upvote you, whenever I see your posts and/or remember.
Another benefit of upvoting your posts will be to make you into a dolphin as fast as possible, so that there is "one more dolphin who isn't a Fed" on Steemit.
This is a very important point but the network does appear to be functioning as intended in the whitepaper on page 20 according to Zipf's law.
Consequently, if you go to your Wallet section and click on your Steam balance and choose Transfer then you can send money to any of the authors (use their username) you think are not getting rewarded enough by the network.
you are a fucking idiot, you didnt get the essence of the post
People write about Steemit because that is what the audience wants to read and vote for. I wrote an article about the Olympics but I think about 7 people voted for it including me. With hindsight I should have posted it on reddit because they're really getting into the Olympics over there, and would have enjoyed it and discussed it more. Of course there is no pay on reddit, but no pay for that kind of thing here anyway..
If you really want writers to write about other stuff, you need to vote for non-Steem stuff. Otherwise you are sending a signal that Steem and Steemit are all you want to read about.
Steemit as it is is going to make all, including whales dolphins and whatever other creature, drown
But who is 'the audience'? The money is only being paid out by the whales, and the money is what gets attention, not votes. We don't have a true signal of what people like to read here.
I have noticed it too. Hahahaha, Steemit stuff is deathly boring. Perhaps you could feature authors (such as others do, like @gavvet, @jacor, @dragonslayer, @stellabelle and I'm sure others, only been here two weeks myself!) whose posts reinforce your message?
I like this idea too, and outlined a possible way to go about it in my comments.
The problem is whale curation bots.
My guess is that the vast majority of the voters on this post are bots. Since you've had succesful posts in the pasts, the bots are recognizing that and upvoting.
I'm not sure how the problem is solved. It may be that the whale curation bots are turned off if it degrades the platform enough. It also might be that the curation bots get smart enough to recognize the truly great content on here.
THIS is a REAL MAN talking.
good work barry
Thanks feminism. Not sure why your comment was down voted. Peace!
Every day I'm Nippling!!
I'm still very new here (day 3) but researching (trying not to get in trouble, more than how to get votes!), and first off Thanks Barry for being a big guy looking out for the new folks. I've read most of the comments on this page just to learn. And my feel so far is that this community is proving itself to be very self-correcting... Content is King, and cream rises - the rule online used to be "Don't write to/for search engines.. Yes "optimize" but write mainly for people and you will succeed" and imho that will happen here - so long as the platform allows these discussions to happen anyways. It's like the two-year rule built into the money aspects from the start up - slow growth, done right, will ensure survival and thriving. Even the fiction writer you replied to below Barry, should hang around, imho. When this thing hits 5 million users, he'll be doing okay too as the topics people look to on this site will diversify.
Since it's "possible" I do hope to make money here, but monetization is NOT what brought me to Steemit. That's like buying vitamins for the MLM program attached to them. I'm here largely bcz Steemit gives the world (and me) a completely free blog/website that comes without ads - what a gift to a "starving artist"! All of my past internet work is on sites built with Front Page and I need a solution now! I'm slowly ditching GoDaddy, pointing some domain names to my posts here (including my rinky-dink podcast and self-published book of poetry from high school) and I'm happy Steemit even exists so I don't have to pay hosting. I'm pretty sure I'll make money from my posts, in due time (and I'm of course investing some time learning how to "optimize my pages" for Steemit) but my point - finally! - is that this is such a perfect platform that even if the financial payout side goes bust, I'd still be an active user because I want, need, and love what it offers.