What's Going Wrong With Steemit

in #steemit6 years ago

This post is completely different from what i use to write but reading a couple of other posts this week and at the same time watch it over and over again happening both in here and in my life i can't help it but wonder. The primary reason though was @tkappa a great writer and person which i personally know and read his post earlier today. You need to check him out too so click here to see his post that inspired me to write mine

Why The Hell there is a tendency of destroying everything around us?


I will generally speak in this paragraph about the above question and then i will reveal my ulterior motive which is (spoiler alert) to try and merge this query with steemit. In all of our history wars are coming one after the other resulting in people dying and whole cities being completely destroyed. At first in a way you could say the cause was countries, states,tribes or whatever you wanna call them that threaten other countries etc etc so therefore that was the only solution. Moving fastforward wars were made because of god and because always one god was better than the other, or the true one or somehow someone went against god's will. Then a little bit of ''truth'' came out when wars emerged with the argument ''we are better than the others'' and by that i mean the true intentions were revealed. Nowadays that we are cooler the true intentions behind wars are camouflaged by nice words and meanings and the most common one is  ''we are saving these people'' in other words we are the saviors that save a country and its people from the bad guys! 

But in each and single one of this occasions which is the one and common factor? 

The answer is quite simple

GREED 


Let's now move on to steemit and see where Greed fits. (everywhere is the answer but let's dive deeper). I was one of the few people that got into steemit quite early, i think it was February of 2017 so i can inform you that the price was at rock bottom at 0,07$ and only a couple of people were around. We were so few that in 2 weeks you could literally get to know all the active ones. Although, i don't have any complains cause i was earning way more than most newbies earn now thanks to @curie and their initiatives, what really amazed me and made me stick more and more was the community.

No No it wasn't the $$ i earned, frankly if you check i haven't withdrawn any and it wasn't the idea behind, which is a decentralized social media platform. Frankly, i had no clue as to what it meant but the community ohh god i love every single bit of it. Each and every person was willing to help anyone out no matter how stupid the question was. There was literally no grudges and stuff and only healthy competition because the goal was common. To make something out of this platform and grow it to something bigger and better than any other community out there. 

That was the original aim and goal and still is but i think it took a different turn. As more and more people are getting into it, the majority of them are greedy. That greed is translated in many ways some of them are:

Bot-Fake Account

Those are just accounts or bots that look like accounts that literally have no reason of existence. They just upload a picture as a post and go to random people to post idiotic comments like good post, i like you, interesting post etc etc. Like we are that stupid and we can't understand what's going on and who actually read our posts. These accounts are keep getting more and more resulting in a chaotic comment section. Also with their posts it makes it way harder to find quality ones of actual people that have something to give to this platform.

Reason why they are doing it: To earn money fast and without doing anything and to earn money by people upvoting their comments as a sign of ''thank you for reading my post''. 

True motive: Greed

Upvoting Bot Use 

This is a very controversial matter. Some people that were behind these bots made tons of money cause of the rise up of sbd's price and in general because they took and take advantage of many users ( it was their fault also so i don't blame the bots only). The reason the bots exist is supposed to be promotion. You pay a price and they provide you a couple of upvotes, thus your post will be more visible. 

Steemit had thought of something like this and since the beginning if you check where the trending page is located, there is an option that says ''promoted''. If someone wanted to promote his post, he could easily pay a price and his post will be seen there so the others that use no bots could be seen everywhere else. When bots came this whole thing became a new issue but nobody did something and guess why. 

Reason why they are doing it: Ofc because some want to take advantage of others and earn money and ofc because some people don't preferto simply build friendships and engage into interaction in order to win true followers but instead they want fast "fame" and money

True motive: Greed

Abusing Power

Those are a handful of people with high SP that do whatever they want. They flag whoever they want without having any consequences of their actions and most people afraid to say something because the same fate awaits them to.

Reason why they are doing it: They just like being in power, cause probably in their real lives they never been in control, so they have to show it to everyone else and fool themselves.  

True motive: Greed

Theft

People that steal content from other users and i have even recently seen stealing comments. They will try and find posts via the net and just copy paste them here in this platform. They are so bored that they won't even change a thing.

Another part of this is the phishing attempts of other's accounts. It's easier to just post a link and steal a person's account that actually make one yourself so why not. Life isn't fair am i right?

Reason why they are doing it: Really fast money without literally make the slightest effort.

True motive: Greed


A Real Example 

You can do it too!


So you are a person with a bunch of SP or you know a person with a bunch of SP. Next step is to create another account and make a delegation or ask that person to delegate you a lot of SP in order your upvote to worth a lot. Then just go over to youtube copy/paste videos of cats and upload every day one of this videos. Then upvote your posts with 100% of your voting power and voila 

I literally have seen this and it's always 1-4 upvotes in which the self vote worth about 20$+ and the comment section is empty too. 

Not Everything is Bad Though

It's not like everything is bad as there are a couple of people, sadly the minority that really cares about the platform and want to grow alongside with it. There a couple of initiatives that are trying to make the better out of us as well as steemit in general like @steemstem , @thesteemengine @utopian-io or like the new steemit-based card game @steemmonsters but still tons of work need to be done both from our side as well as from those that are behind steemit like @ned

I know there is still hope but somehow that mess needs to be cleaned. Whenever money is around there is also Greed it's like an absolute rule of humanity. You can translate money to trading, to having lands or to whatever else that shows power, it's the same, human greed will lurk there. 

The people that believe in this platform need the interaction and need signs that this is getting better and not worse. They want to know that their genuine work can obtain an audience and isn't suffocating because of  what i mentioned earlier. They also need to know how they can become better and in a short period of time i can guarantee that they will help others and show their appreciation to the community!

I would like to hear if you have any ideas as to how we gonna make this community better of if you know about other solid sub-communities that exist in here

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And again Steemit its way better than having your own blog ,youtube channel making a little shit something plus all the costs for your hosting, tweaking your SEO etc. in the case of having your own website.
Now about the greed and how big guys use their SP its the same old story , its something like having insider info about a stock, project etc.
It's more like you can't tell to the other person what to do with his money, simple!

yes i don't disagree with any of your points ( δεν ξερω τωρα να γραφω ελληνικα η αγγλικα :p ) and literally i have no regards or issues as far as it concerns my profile and account but this week i have seen multiple posts from quality and great users that are somehow ( what i mentioned in the post) is keeping them down don't give them the energy to rise up. At the same time i believe for newbies it's keep getting harder and harder to achieve something.

To the power abusers again i agree with you in a way. You can't tell them what to do with their money, but you can minimize they abuse if the community or other users in power come a bit more together

Well in that case if X quality writer, content creator etc. believes he deserves more and want his efforts to be rewarded he is missing the audience right ? so giving a try to buy some votes and climb to trending section. or even better get involved with the whale/curation projects.

Again like in real life someone who wants big fat payouts need to work his way up

buying votes for me with bots it's completely wrong, it's another example of what is keeping down the platform while at the beginning of it the promoted page next to hot was created for that particular reason. Also it's not like that in real life. You don't just need to work your way up and earn money because there are other factors that will keep you from that ( not necessarily though)

okey we have different opinions about that, the golden rule is learn how the system works and try to be a part of it ! Like every society ! We agree on that at least ? :)

haha let's agree to that!

I agree with many of the points you make but we shouldn't forget that steem is the only (to my knowledge) crypto which you can get for free, from the "generosity" of others. Of course them being generous to you can depend on many factors, like doing some work for them, writting great content or simply being their best buddy irl. Which reminds me, the exact same applies to real life. :D

So you might call it greed but the "greedy" will just say they upvote their crappy kitten videos only because they protect their investment. Now, you can make counter arguments that no, upvoting other people is better for their investment for XX reasons but in the end it is what it is. They can even counterargue that saying they HODL their earnings and hence they do good to the platform by helping the price go up.. And this is actually an argument that does hold some merit... Well, at least nobody is dieing here XD

True, the monetization system is not perfect and I am not claiming it is.

But imo, for the average joe is quite good, possibly the best you can find. Many of the people making money here (small or big) wouldn't make a cent if they tried any other internet money making method. Here you can find a whale, leave a 5 minute well thought comment and chances are you will make 1-2 $ for nothing. Or you can take your stories or art and post them here and make some nice extra income. Today it's easier than ever to make money on steemit. Steemstem, curie, utopian-io, d.tube, steemhunt, d.live and so many other groups are essentially giving out money for free, as long as you give 10 minutes of your life to actually interact with them instead of just leech. Let's not even forget @greek-trail, true it only gives pennies, but let's be honest.. Most posts on steemit don't even deserve those, since 90 % of the content on the platform is selfies, plagied or even incomprehensible (I am often guilty of that too!) :D

Will you make a living, let alone become a millionaire? Probably no, regardless of the quality of your content. Although hundreds of nigerians beg to differ, for them steemit has become a true life-changer ;) As for me, steemit has been a blessing. The kind of content I like to post here would be impossible to be monetized any other way, I have tried.

Of course, this is my opinion, based on 10+ years experience of making money online as a blogger, freelancer, affiliate marketter and occasionally, full on spammer :)

To elaborate a bit more since I have work to do and I am trying to find an excuse to procrastinate.

IMO, the main problem with steem's monetization, is that the average joe (like me) can potentially make more money that they would do on, for example, youtube. But, for someone truly talented it will be very difficult, probably impossible, to actually stand out here and become a star. So for normal people, despite its flaws steemit is the best place to make money online. For people who have the potential to reach the sky ( or think they have) they'd better look for another platform.

P.S. : somebody got to play the devil's advocate

First of all i really enjoy long comments like this one :P The primary reason as i mentioned writing this post is a bunch of others i read this week with the final one being @tkappa and i said let's write! As far as it concerns me and my profile-account i literally have no problems and regards so it wasn't a post to put it simply of me crying about myself about my current statue ( to may it clear i don't say that you said something like that).

I literally see so many people that have this issues and as steemit gets more popular more and more dumbasses come along to take advantage of others. The reference of greed and wars i mentioned in the beginning was exactly to state just like you stated too that it happens in our real-lives and real lives societies, it's a trait we humans have. Also i agree that it's one of the best ways to may money and completely free of charge. I though to continue writing about the good things but i would be way to long of a post and i thought to write about it tomorrow mor ein depth.

The only issue i have and that is personal is that when i see something which i believe it has full potential of being way bigger and it still isn't because of many factors, in this case the once i mentioned, it makes me sad. There are things and solutions to these issues that could have been done or found if people were more organized that would made the platform way bigger that it is. A couple of them we have discussed in the meet ups.

Also, i really consider @greek-trail a big deal. To me these pennies matter a lot, as well as the person behind it and i didn't mention it because it's a small community limited to Greeks and each country supposedly have it's own ( some of them are better than us others are way way worst). I tried to mention a couple that anyone can join and check out.

Finally, ( i ended up writing a big one too :P ) i don't consider you the average joey and you know too that you aren't. You have made way too many quality posts and i get it for sometimes especially when you post each day to upload a picture or a meme but the average joey nowadays are the ones that do this constantly. Also you made a second account for that particular reason and you stated that you didn't want to take advantage of some people that upvote every post you made. That not only shows that you are thinking the others but the platform too. I don't believe there is any of us that made a post that somehow believed it's way underrated ( i included myself to that) but somehow we can balance it. the newbies can't though .

Anyway i still believe that there are ways and if we get organized a bit more for the sake of the platform and ofc us we can cast aside those dumbasses that pollute the platform!

i hope i didn't forgot something :P

Yeah, I totally feel your motives and I understand you are not yet another complainer who complains just because he hasn't become a millionaire from shitposting memes on steemit. After all, the fact that you haven't cashed out a single dime speaks for itself. But as you said I too have seen a ton of posts complaining lately about the current situation, and I guess the more the steem price falls the more complaining comments we will get.

But...BUT! It gets tiring after a point seeing people complaining. People complaining about the whales.. complaining why steem hadn't reached 100$, complains about this and that.. As a curator for a group that I used to be in (and as you know the curators for that group were actually making less money than the people that received the votes) people complaining why out of their 10 posts we missed one, blatant plagiarizers crying for not getting a vote or why we reported them to steemcleaners or whatever..

You know what I rarely see here? (I am not talking about you) People offering to help instead of just take. People delegating some of their steem power to the groups that vote them. Or even a simple a thank you. Heck, I was called an asshole in a comment here for making a thank you post today. Wtf ?

"The only issue i have and that is personal is that when i see something which i believe it has full potential of being way bigger and it still isn't because of many factors, in this case the once i mentioned, it makes me sad."

That's true to an extent by it applies to the rest of the world. There are tons of talented people on other platforms that will never be discovered. Meanwhile mediocre people get rich because they know a guy or have the connections or have big boobs and a tight ass... well until the communist utopia becomes a reality (probably never, thank god) the same applies to steemit although to a bigger extent. All you can do is work hard and if you do chances are you will be rewarded, sooner or later.

"Finally, ( i ended up writing a big one too :P ) i don't consider you the average joey and you know too that you aren't."

Oh yes I am! I have no special talents, although I d like to think I am a jack of all trades :D I am sure most people here can write as good if not better "quality posts" if they put the time I put on my "good" posts.

"
if we get organized a bit"

Dont wait for the we. Most people as you said are greedy. Ask yourself what can I do? Go to a group you like and offer your help. Tell them I can do xx do you want me in your team?. Delegate some steempower to a group or person you think are good for the platform (@acidyo @ steemstem and @curie are the top 3 that come to my mind). What else.. I don't know... Even something simple like sharing all your posts and posts by others you like on other social media like Facebook! Imagine, if everybody did that steemit's traffic (and price) would explode. But almost nobody does even that simple thing.. most people just complain and expect money to rain..

Rant off :*

I hope I didn't forget something too 😂

I guess this comment counts as complaining. Shit!

hahaha in the meantime yesterday after some comments in the post i checked the price of steem
and in general other cryptos :P. i literally had no clue, i expected something like 2$ in both steem and sbd but well living in the era of 0.07 everything that is more than this sounds good to me :p

I have given it a lot of though concerning the organization and the communities. The delegation is sure a great idea but it's a bit far for me as i don't have too much ( now i think at 100% it's worth around 15-17 cent) and i want to spent it to the people i regularly do. if i had 4xtimes what i have probably i would delegate some.

I am glad you understand my logic and i totally get what you are saying with the complainers :P Still i want to try and change this platform and bring it to an Utopian lvl (not communist :P fuck them :p ) something different and way way better than the generic rule of life isn't fair and beyond greed to the extend i can. Once again now that i have a lot of free time :p i will sit my ass down and think of something that might help the community and the platform and when i accomplish that i will let you know ( i hope i will think of something :P )

I wonder why I keep landing on greek-trail posts. Haha.

I love how you put it. This is why I like sites like Steemit and another one because I don't need to do my own blog hosting and all that. It could be better but my AdSense is fckd up and dead so I do other stuff instead. 😅

Posted using Partiko Android

greed is completely natural and i think the issue is mostly the system itself, as in what is allowed or not. at least steemit inc is still trying to fix shit. but when you have whales controlling most of what goes on the blockchain, it's a red flag for any community. the idea of account-based voting sounds good on paper and might even solve the issue, but we'll have to see how it plays out..

and in general if you think of it the whole thing is a bit of controversial. On the one hand we got a completely free platform that we can say whatever we want. There are some rules but not a lot follow them. An example is the promoted channel that was supposed to be for anyone that wanted to promote someone else or himself. With the bots that option is totally destroyed.

On the other hand now as you said we have some whales that basically have more power than anyone else and basically can manipulate both the market and thing around steemit

I have invited over some of my friends to try the Steem platform and one thing they immediately noticed was the number of bots currently in place.

Their introductory post alone got 5+ comments all from bots, the rude part is that most of those comment "greetings" are being self-upvoted or upvoted by some large account. Personally I think for a newbie just trying to test out this platform, I think it is not nice to see that a comment on your post gets more payout than you.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that, a lot of people now are just looking for things to justify their own greed.

exactly and i remember when i first enter i had made a half bad intro post, i never uploaded a picture of my face, just a drawing :P with the date and stuff to verify my existence in an extend and then i had a bunch of comments all by actual people that welcomed me and giving me tips. how cool is to see that you are welcomed and that people are willing to help you without knowing you only by what you wrote and we have what you mentioned :P

Great post ! I wish I knew the answer! It’s very disheartening when you work hard to create quality posts and you see garbage worth loads of 💰!!

totally and it has more impact to the newbies. We that are a couple of months old in here :P we have build some relationships but if you are completely it's tough

Yes, and I believe it has become even tougher since I joined last June! 😢

you must have witnessed it all from that time you joined right? from way too low prices to way to high and now at this state :P

Yes, I had 6 times as much in my wallet in December than I have now - supposedly. Lol! I have taken out only $400 - and that was just to figure out how to do it! I think many of the whales must have pulled out since then.

many if the whales made tons of mine for a life in that period :P

Hi @filotasriza3 it's always interesting to read you. I agree with what you write here and I'm happy to finally have more time to be on Steemit.

thanks a lot and nice seeing you again!

Heh. I did a rant like this a month or so ago I think. Particularly when the dust issue was everywhere. What really ticked me off was I tried to ask around regarding that and was told to submit a proposal instead via utopian io. Meh. How can I propose something I don't really know abt? 😂

Anyway yeah greed is all around because simply Steemit was made for people to earn money. Naturally we will come here to earn money. And then we get frustrated and angry we don't earn enough or that it feels like a job maybe and all that. And then afterwards we accept that we shouldn't take this site seriously and just have fun with it.

At least that's what happened to me. Makes life easier and better than being concerned abt my earnings here. 😅

The thing I want to see is maybe another curator (maybe a new one) like Curie that would combine big fishes upvoting power into one acct and upvote quality posts that get to the trending page so people quit complaining abt the things they see on there. But then again if that happens, those people at the trending page will just up the money on their posts so they will still be on trending.

So I dunno. I'll just post whatever I feel like posting and cruise around Steemit. 😂

Posted using Partiko Android

Naturally as you said everyone came here for the money. At least 99% of the users and a vast number of them came when steem and sbd were on a huge rise. The trending page was another factor that made many join. You just see a single post earning 500$ and you say whatttt i can be rich as hell!

I use steemit for fun too but because i see it's potential i wanna make better out of it and in terms of community too. It's waste to destroy as humanity once again something given to us completely free of charge for the sake of greed and money while with a little bit of logic we all can make more

Well pretty much we have the same idea mate. As I said to @tkappa and in my post as well Steemit is a miniature of our society. You'll see every kind of behavior and even though the sample(us) is not huge it is still enough to make safe conclusions...
It is the human nature...
Like it or not it is a whale game...
What I actually don't understand is, why do people feel that by upvoting someone it is like they are doing a favor...ffs unless we all have so shity content...but we don't...it is the way humans are made. I guess it is in our DNA...

But listen to this too... a month(more or less back) I made an experiment. I decided to go and upvote at 100% (you know my .10 cents) some newcomers...Their reputation was ranging from 30-43. I read their posts and I dropped meaningful comments on all of them (around 6 accounts)
Well buddy believe it or not not a single fucker replied...

People just care about money. I won't pretend to be a saint that's why we are all here aren't we? It is just the attitude of some people that makes me and you and a bunch of others to make these kind of posts...

Good job by the way...

hahaha i did a similar experiment about 6 months or so ago. I went to 4-5 newcomers and made some 50% upvotes (given the times it was worth more around 20cents, now less than 10 :P ) and a comment. All of them replied, supported me back with their vote and comment and with the 2 of them we build very good relationships. The other 3 come and go they are not that active but when they come there is an interaction.

I think the key here is the selection progress. I don't know your method if it was just random newcomers or anything else but i had opened about 20 windows of newcomers to finally chose 5 of them that i believed they came here for the same reason as me

We need more posts like this. If steemit doesn't make improvements in this regard it will be overtaken by "the next big thing". As soon as another Social Media blockchain comes about that has earning potential, Steemit users will jump ship.

exactly! it may be the first one that came up with the idea but if they don't do some regular changes ( like with the updates in games :P ) a new player will steal the audience!

Hey @filotasriza3, thank you very much for this post. I think that you are right in some/many/all of your points. Since my experience with Steemit only goes back to February 2018, I don't have the same experience than you do. So you might see some things better than me.
And to be honest: The bigger Steemit grows the more people who think about making money fast will come.
Question is: Can we blame them for this idea? I am pretty sure that in the beginning there was an idea to maybe make a better platform than all the others are. But I think: every time it goes about the possibility to make money, you will always have people who try to use (or misuse) the system for their own purposes. If I think more about it: It's not only in cases of the possibility to make money.
For example: I am a german tax advisor. Very often people come to me and they want to know about possibilities to save taxes. Sometimes this wish so bit that they don't care about other impacts. If they are founding additional companies in other countries only because one of their friends did so too, for example. They only see the tax rate in the target country being lower than in their home country. So they may save let's say about 1,000 $ of taxes. On the other hand side they forget that they pay additional amounts for two local companies (with bookkeeping, tax returns and balance sheets in both countries). This may cost 1,500 $ per year. But: they are still lucky because they save 1,000 $ taxes every year. If you take the example like this you can clearly see that their approach doesn't make sense from a financial point of view. But they can tell that they save taxes. Goal reached! The rest doesn't matter in a first step.
And now coming back to Steemit: It is a system to get STEEM. People tell their friends about it. And to be successful, they need to get STEEM within a short time. Afterwards they can tell their friends how successful they are. And people are always creative in thinking about reaching a goal (doesn't need to be a financial goal) without investing resources (time, money). In other words: People are lazy!
And as long as there are systems that support laziness, people will find ways to do so. If you look in the literature you will find lots of examples.
Sorry, this text became much longer than I thought in the beginning. I should have made a separate posting, I think.

@taxguy in our country what @trumpman says is the one and only truth :P

I'm just curious: which country is this?

The number 1 country in taxing matters named Greece :p

thanks for the long comment. it's like a fetish i really enjoy long comments, it shows me that people read my post or at least a part of it. To me still it comes down to Greed. If you checked at first i spoke about Greed very generally to show that this isn't just part of steemit but part of our everyday lives. People are way too greedy meaning they want fame, power, money and they want it fast. Laziness is another trait we share and the combo with Greed takes it in a whole other level.

Also i get your tax example, in societies we got law for these type of people although laws don't always apply. At the same time here in steemit it is supposed that there no laws and that is the key factor but we can actually minimize and cast aside those try to take advantage of others and try to use means that will undermine the platform and therefore the community.

The ''idea'' or an idea behind steemit is supposed to be a social media that is way different than Facebook, Instagram etc etc. The monetize factor and the no censorship is a key factor but if we bring over or come by themselves, the same people that made those other communities such a bad example of a community and don't do anything we gonna have the same result