Misconceptions About Steemit And Possible Solutions

in #steemit7 years ago (edited)




There is no doubt that Steemit is a revolutionary social media platform. Nonetheless, we tend to forget that it is still based on basic human behavior. People expect to be paid based on the quality of their content but they soon realize that this is not the case. In fact, getting paid based on one's merit is rather the exception rather than the rule.

This is not necessarily bad as people might perceive. Much like the outside world, the economics of Steemit are first and foremost based on social and less on intellectual capital. The relationships Steemians form are perhaps their strongest asset. In the outside world we call this nepotism. Whether we like the idea or not, this is how the world rolls. It is what it is. No need to blame Steemit for this.


Social capital is much more important than intellectual and financial capital. Humans are up and foremost social species. The concept of economics is based heavily on our sociality and less on the subjective value we ascribe to things we produce. Sooner or later, every human realizes that is all about who we know and less about what we know.

One can produce good content but maintain a rather negative attitude. Most likely, they will never get noticed. I know because only recently I got to enjoy high rewards for my posts. I used to engage in a lot of debates and criticisms about the platform and that got me a bad reputation amongst most whale circles. I was called an asshole, and still appear to be to some people's eyes. Remember, you can make 100 good deeds but it only takes a single bad day and you can be marked for life. First impressions matter. Bad impressions matter even more. Again, no need to complain about our "homosapien behavior". It is yet another extension of who we are.

Whether you want to call yourself a straight talker or contrarian, very few people accept criticism and almost everybody welcomes praise. If you have any doubt about this, check the "Here is a Steemit post about how I made money on steemit that will make me even more money" or "I have X followers and I joined Steemit last year, pay me". Obvious self shilling posts, are way too obvious and we all know this. We just prefer to turn a blind eye because it gives a positive vibe.

The competition is so tight that some might find that they are not really good with their content as they thought they were. A bit of ass-kissing and political maneuvering can go a long way and some find themselves rise to the top. At the end, not even the newcomers mind about these tactics. It is no secret that the majority of the comments are junk, sucking up to the author as a last resort in order to be upvoted or followed. It looks ugly because it cannot be anything else.

I want to stress out that is not an inherent problem of Steemit but rather how economic dynamics flow in any system. We observe this behavior everywhere in any economy. If you have worked for a large company, you know exactly what I am trying to illustrate.


Another important aspect that we all forget is that the early investors in cryptocurrencies are few, very few. Those people were often getting ridiculed for owning "invisible money". They hodled. They believed. Later on, they got to diversify some of their bitcoin assets to Steemit. They took the risk so we could enjoy the fruits of their labour. They are the reason we have all this. This is part of the reason the wealth distribution of Steemit looks almost identical to what we see in the outside world. The whales are the ~1%, the ~15% are western civilization (dolphins) and ~85% are the minnows (rest of the world).

Statistically, some posts, even if they are exceptional, they will never rise to the trending page. Much like the rest of the economy, the same names will appear day after day on the front lines because they managed to make an impression early on. Similarly, the same companies seem to hold the power the longest due to reputation while the rest fight each other for the breadcrumbs. Sure, there is disruption from time to time but the big boys make sure to pick out the early birds before they take off.

Even if some make it at the end, they too join the upper circle and it gets even harder for those at the bottom to break free. Heck, even if the whales have the best of intentions, it is humanly impossible to manually curate hundreds of new posts. This is why even after HF19, for the most part, some top authors earn even more and the middle guys get to split the rewards between them. Again, not a flaw on Steemit but a human dynamic that has to be properly evaluated.

TL;DR: Steemit reflects the economic paradigm of the outside world right now. This is to be expected since the blockchain is still a novel idea. Steemit is the first platform of it's kind. We shouldn't be surprised or disappointed. Like a friend told me yesterday in the comments "Apes Gonna Ape" so we owe to lan accordingly.

A possible solution to this will be wide spread Steem Power delegation. For those who are not familiar, Steem Power is the power of an upvote. You know how important this is when you see your post getting pumped up by tens or even hundreds of dollars.

Right now, a few people hold all the Steem Power even if that has been somewhat delegated to a few dolphins. I believe a wider spread of Steem Power delegation to a few reputable people will change the scene. There are a few people in here that have been in the platform since the beginning and really care about its potential. Delegating this voting duty to them will empower more Steemians and also take the burden away from the whales. After all, with all these taking place, no matter what they do, they appear to be the bad guys.

Let's not forger that even power delegation can be abused. This can be controlled by manual reports to the community (much like @Steemcleaners and @cheetah do). We can even push this a step further and assign specific curators with power for specific Steemit tags. In this way, we won't see uneven distribution of rewards from only one category.

The trending page will also change every day. Competition and anticipation about who might be trending will create more engagement among Steemians. It will also build more trustworthiness to new (and increasingly skeptical members) that see the same people trending on the front page day in day out.

My last recommendation will be a payout cap for each post. If a post cannot reach more than a certain amount, more rewards will be distributed to more people. This will help the platform grow even more since it will create competition among popular tags that will diversify the content. This will enrich the platform and raise it's value even further.


I understand that these recommendations will not be well received by some people but I am being so critical because I am beginning to see some red flags that might get pretty ugly. Right now there is dangerous draining of the reward pool. There is an immediate need to bring stability into the system. We got a pretty good push from the general crypto pump of the last months but we owe to use this leverage as best as we can while it lasts. I don't know about you, but I want to enjoy Steemit for years to come. Otherwise we might be already killing the goose that lays the golden eggs...







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Really great post! Yes, Steemit is a microcopy of what the real world is. Nicely told... But your cap solution is not ok I guess. If the majority of voters wants to give someone an extra big welcome to the community or like their content so much, they are the owners of their Vote... Introducing a cap is a bit like expropiating them. If they want someone to be number one and they cherish his content so much that even if his content is worth 10.000 USD they still want him to get a bigger part of the pie than let them...

I think you did not mean it this way, but your measure in this regard reminds me of politics where they want to introduce how much a private corporation can pay their managing directors...
I think this is not the way to go...

SP holders are the people who are the owners of the platform. I think they should be allowed to do as they please with their holding. If not investors will look the other way and not buy SP.

Then you get a Falling Steem Price and less payouts... less interest in the platform and so on... a vicious circle.

Thing is, a handful of big boys can elevate content to the thousands. Even if 1,000 minnows vote it won't matter since a single whale vote can take them down pretty easy.

If people see unrealistic rewards from the same people, they will get discouraged...

People upvote me because I'm extremely funny, kind, caring, creative but most of all modest.

That humor was worth a dime, LOL

This post received a 3.6% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @hotandrandom! For more information, click here!

Thanks for this, kyriacos! It never occurred to me that Steemit is just like the outside world - I was busy being amazed that such a platform even exists - but you're right. At least at the moment it is.

Yes, it's the same people on the trending page every day, but I seem to have simply accepted the fact that I'm a year late to the party... And of course I'm accepting that I have to work hard for my rewards. Nobody promised us free money here.

But it's true that some people may get discouraged or even burned-out, trying to come up with valuable content - for very little rewards. I was a bit discouraged today when I found out I had more than 100 people (or bots?) voting on one of my German posts with less than 1% of their voting power each... I was wondering why they bother voting in the first place.

There's a lot I'm not 100% understanding yet, but also Steemit is still such a young platform, which will hopefully grow better and bigger and fairer every day. Your suggestions for solutions sound pretty smart, so I hope the witnesses or decision makers are listening.

It is refreshing to see things from the perspective of a minnow and I think we should all focus from you guys perspective. We often forget how things are because we have been around for so long.

Keep steemin on. I believe the solutions ill come.

I agree with you Connnecteconomy... I speak French so I try to translate well as people write it, and if I translate "words for words" is not your expression or sentence formulation . It is more effort for each publication for me.. just this comment will have taken 5 minutes to write loll ... Some publications or i estimate that I put a lot of effort and time and I have nothing and other post where I put less effort or a simple video for example I had more ...not logic for me loll But anyway , It will be always Steemit the champion if we compare to facebook;)

I want to stress out that is not an inherent problem of Steemit but rather how economic dynamics flow in any system. We observe this behavior everywhere in any economy. If you have worked for a large company, you know exactly what I am trying to illustrate.

This is what people tend to forget - what they think are inherent flaws in a social medium system or in the mechanics of a thing are really just how humans operate. Social currency is often more valuable than something that is well-produced or "quality" and that's been true since probably the beginning of human history.

I like the idea of delegation of steem power via tags, then you could have so-called "experts" or "curators" based on category. As steem grows I think it'd be interesting to have more filtering via categorization which will overall I think strengthen the various communities and allow more quality content to rise to the top.

"Apes Gonna Ape"

Love this comment. I like your recommendations, though I'm pretty sure they wouldn't get the support they need to ever become reality.

Yea a Cap makes sense. Also up-voting your own comments should be blocked.
Well put together Post. Thanks for sharing.

Yeap, Self upvoting is destructive.

I fully disagree about not self upvoting comments and I upvote all my own comments at 10% to get them up the feed.

(If I wasn't allowed to do that I would have a reciprocal comment voting arrangement replacing that within hours!)

I also upvote each comment I reply to to keep the action happening. Been doing that for 10 months now...

What I'm wondering is - what do you think a good cap would be? I think it's possibly a good idea, and am thinking $1000.

I just do it because I like the fact that someone voted for me. :-)

:) always a good incentive I guess

I didn't get through this entirely but one thing I take away from steemit is that it really doesn't afford the opportunity for "gems" of wisdom to get through from people who don't rank very high up amongst the wave of sheeple who actually think social media is more than just a way to waste your time via idle endeavors. :-) I'd like to be able to "search" for my content. How do I do that here at steemit? I know I'm missing things I might like. I want to make the best possible mixed drink to celebrate the 4th. How do I find out the best way to make a pina colada here at steemit? Shirley, somebody must have "tried to" tell me how by now...no? :-)

The tags are rather limited. The search function as well. We need to improve on this.

Interesting thoughts. Most of them were already know to me but there are some that i never thought about earlier! The REWARD CAP? Man that would be sooo good! This is the thing that would discourage all the trails to support same authors and even a lot of minnows that try to snipe the whale/trail vote for biggest curation reward. I mean, nothing against Miss 2000 bucks and her likes, this is nothing personal, rather a solution to the problem Steemit faces. Until lately I also didn’t understand why whales would delegate so much power and you explained it well to me. For that I thank you.

I think many people started realizing what is going on and we have to address this soon enough

Been punting a weekly reward cap for a month or two now... my version is that If your post payouts pass a certain threshold within the 7 day cycle any new posts are automatically payout declined...

No rewards are altered or votes removed... so if you can manage a viral biggie, then good for you... but then that's it for the rest of the week until that one is paid out

That would remove the “unattractivity” of having every single article capped, as well as give you the option to have a blast (like the guy who received 17k bucks for his surgery) and at the same time restrict you from doing this repeatedly at the expense of everyone else, with the reason being heavy drainage of the reward pool. If every article was capped, one could just spam them and he couldn’t care less about the limit.

Do you have any exact numbers in mind? What sounds like a reasonable “limit threshold” to a whale like you?

community consensus would be good to decide that and it would be easy to quantify, the weekly reward pool is a semi fixed amount of steem, just set a threshold at the consensus percentage

This one sounds good as well. Anything really to avoid the milking and consecutive trending. New people are yet again getting suspicious.

i like your writings and genuinely admire the level of thought you put into your posts. all i have is you can have my cents all day....till i can afford huge dollars.....

cheers!

I try to incite discussions within my post but unfortunately due to the fact my posts don't get any views there are rarely any replies so intern there is no stimulus for a debate. Hopefully that will change after I put even more hours of work and dedication into the platform then I can have some enjoyable conversations.
Well I have bright futures for steem and the cryptomarkets.
Let's see if it all pans out

How long have you been on steemit?
Some people worked their asses off for 3 months, and saw hardly any money from their posts.
Out of those same people, most quit.
Only a few crazed people continued.
They are mostly doing well now.

I believe that you first need to create followers by creating well throughout comments.

I try to make my comments somewhat lengthy and something gay I can use to engange with the Author. Not some half-arsed 'good post, upvoted, follow me'

something gay

I have not seen this expression used in this way in a while. I reminds me of British English.

I of course meant gay as in happy and in no way was I trying to be provocative.
I think that it was a typo
I'm on my phone and the autocorrect is rubbish haha.
Sorry about that and you are correct, I am from Britain.

No, I actually like you using 'gay' as in the happy definition.

that's the best idea actually.

In New Zealand we have a brand of ice cream cones that have been around for decades called "Gaytime".

Now using "gay" for happy is getting to be quite hip and Gaytime cones are pretty cool!

https://shop.countdown.co.nz/Shop/ProductDetails?stockcode=273822

I remember those Zillion of hours and hours reading, replying and staying involved for a whole year ....some people get here and start complaining right away.
I don't understand. I have a more important message for the future....

It's boring! So boring! Take it easy with that Mooooneyyy

All takes time if you don't have the right wire ups to the "fire" or at least lots of invested cash in this platform.

Indeed. it takes work. Nice vid btw.

Do you know about Klaus Kinski ? Such a perfect villain in many great movies

nop. Not aware of him actually. Any recommendations?

Truer words haven't been spoken. I disagree with you on pretty fundamental issues, but there is no better way to create a following than through engagement with other authors and other curators. Curation's the trick to being successful long-term here.

Like you said: the trick is who you know, not what you know.