A few questions about steemit

hell2o (25)in #steemit • 8 years ago (edited)

I found steem/steemit a few days ago and just signed up for a account today but I've still got a few questions about both the steemit system and steem in general:

Steemit questions:

Is there a downvote button? (I saw the flag button, is that the same as downvoting?)
How is inappropriate content handled? I don't mean nsfw stuff, I mean how does steemit handle people posting illegal stuff, does the flag system get rid of it?
Is steem.io an official steem/steemit website?
How is steem tied to steemit? (how does steem given by steemit get distributed to users?, is there cryptographic proof of activity on steemit stored on the steem blockchain?)
How does steemit inc fit into all this? (I realise they must have some development role but how do they intend to profit from steemit? )(I assume they are a for-profit organisation due to the "inc")

Steem questions:

Why should steem (as a unit of currency) be considered valuable to someone buying it? (as far as I can tell it just gets given out so why should someone want to buy it?)
how are steem, steem power and steam dollars tied together? (how is the value of a steam dollar in steem determined at any time), (is steem power just steem "locked" into being used to determine the value of a vote?)

#steemhelp #steemit-questions #steemit-faq

8 years ago in #steemit by hell2o (25)

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sean-king (69) 8 years ago (edited)

Steemit:

The flag is indeed the down vote button.
Steem is blockchain based and mostly uncensorable. However Steemit decides which blockchain entries it displays. Things that get down voted disappear from Steemit but remain in the blockchain. It's up to users to police themselves by down voting inappropriate content. There are no moderators.
Yes
Steem is the blockchain database. Steemit is just one user interface to the database. Steemd.com is another. There will be more in the future.
Dunno

Steem:

One must have Steem in order to be able to post or curate content. So, Steem is an access token first and foremost. And, the more Steem (or Steem Power) you have, the more influential you are on the platform--that is, the more your vote counts and the more exposure your posts will get. Since everyone wants influence and exposure, Steem has value.
Please read the whitepaper for details. Steem Power is essentially just locked or restricted Steem. Steem Dollars are tokens that always have a value near 1 USD.

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hell2o (25) 8 years ago

What part of a post is actually stored on the blockchain? because if anything illegal gets added to the blockchain then won't everyone who keeps a copy of the blockchain be in someway liable?

Also won't steemit need to implement some sort of dmca compliant blocking system so they don't get hit with massive fines as soon as someone decides to sue because their content got uploaded to steemit without permission.

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sean-king (69) 8 years ago

The text of every post is stored, along with up votes and down votes and other metadata. However, photos and videos are not actually stored in the blockchain.

Once in the blockchain, it can't be removed or censored. So, what's a government to do? They can't require the impossible. Best they could do would be to order Steemit not to display certain data found in the blockchain, but they couldn't require it to be deleted and they couldn't censor it.

I assume that if Steemit gets a DCMA notice they can and would stop displaying the offending data on their website, but it would still be on the blockchain, and I'm sure there will eventually be "dark" versions of Steemit, or dark blockchain browsers/explorers, that will make available an uncensored view of the blockchain for those who really want to see it.

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1 vote

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hell2o (25) 8 years ago

That sounds like a recipe for a massively bloated blockchain. are the posts at least compressed in some way before being added to the blockchain? if steem is meant to be comparable to reddit then it should be prepared to handle similar amounts of data, according to a source I found one month of Reddit comments is about 30GB, so how is steem expected to handle that much data (steem will actually need to handle more data then that due to the overhead caused by including cryptographic proof with each comment, upvote and edit) without becoming semi-centralized (limited to a small group of big miners)?

also how are edits handled? a complete copy added to the blockchain each time an edit is made or just the changes?

source: https://www.reddit.com/r/datasets/comments/3bxlg7/i_have_every_publicly_available_reddit_comment/

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1 vote

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