The Interview Showcase #11 - Exclusive Talk With A well-known German Steemian

Hello, Folks,

It's The Interview Showcase!!!. This is the 11th Edition of “The interview Showcase”. A lifestyle program that comes with many educational values. A weekly interview of top users in the blog concerning some trending topics on the Steemit platform. And tips that can help other Steemians to progress positively and help boost the Steem’s growth. It will help you to get to know more about Steemians around the globe and even Steemit itself.

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I take time to look at some of the most important topics in the blockchain and I have a chat/call with top Steemians who have a greater idea about those topics.

They also share some tips that are able to help other users to understand the blockchain and make use of it in a correct way.

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This week is another exciting week for the show’s audience because I invited a well-known German Steemian @chriddi.

: Hi Chriddi , great to have you in the show today all the way from Germany - Europe

🔶Chriddi: Hi Ub, hi there in Africa! I'm happy to finally accept your invitation to be interviewed. There were just too many challenges in real life for me to take care of your questions. But in the meantime, it's more peaceful around me and I can concentrate on you. I'm curious - so go ahead!

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: This is good to know and I'm about to ask you just few Important Questions.

: It is observed on the platform that most users when they make the kind of progress and profit you have made, delegate their stake to a voting bot. Why haven't you done that?

🔶Chriddi: Haha, you're going straight to the guts 🙂. I'll try to keep the answer short and simple, although "short and simple" is truly not one of my supreme disciplines...

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Well, delegating your SP to an automated vote bot is for me the most anti-social, selfish way to go on a social media platform like this.

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I still believe in the principle of "give and take", in the original idea of being rewarded for good contributions (content publications, app developments, whatever...). If you delegate your SP, you can't participate in this principle, you only enrich yourself and a bot operator. Imagine if we all do this. Then who is supposed to curate, and appreciate contributions?

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If you are an active Steemian, what means you blog yourself and expect at least reactions to your articles from others, I think this self-enriching behavior is abhorrent. Not to mention that many users of these "services" feel compelled to post daily - causing spam and fraud (e.g. plagiarizing text and images, thus violating copyrights, which is a serious offense).

Not to absolutely demonize these bots (which I do, haha), I have to say that I'm only talking about myself. From me as a blogger and curator (read, appreciate, possibly vote if I like the post). Although I once bought some STEEM, I never considered myself an investor. I always just wanted to blog and interact, owning a bit of "play money" in the process, to have a visible part in what was happening.

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But of course, there are pure investors who are not interested in blogging at all. They don't want to produce, they don't want to interact, and they just want to increase their money. And Steemit is also suitable for this, delegations to certain bots and the return of the investment, make this possible.

That's fine with me, as long as these investors remain inactive in the blogging space. For example, I know a user who didn't want to be active anymore after the big fork (too bad, she was a brilliant blogger) but didn't want to sell her sizable stake either. She has delegated everything to a bot operator and receives daily cash STEEM. Then bot usage is like a savings account, you get a good interest margin. BUT: That has to be enough. For "doing nothing" earning money must be enough. With the greed to earn even more (promised votes), the Steem is polluted, and the really lot of spam makes it unattractive.

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So I think it would be a good idea for Steemit Inc. to separate the blogging division from the investment division. I have no idea how, but for talented developers, such a separation should be possible.
In this case, the problem of "falsified" rewards would also be solved: Actually good content should get good rewards...
Apart from that, the delegation bots are not worthwhile for everyone, you must already have a certain stake. This means that with bot usage "the rich" get richer and richer, and "the poor" don't get any attention. Yes, unfortunately, that's how the world works. But that's not how Steem should be, it should provide equal opportunity. It should make the world a better place! At least that's still my (naive?) hope.

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: When Hive was launched and new policies were added to the Steemit platform, there were a lot of issues, and many users who started at the same time as you moved over to Hive. Why did you stay here on Steemit?

🔶Chriddi: Okay, now I have "warmed up" and will be much more careful with the distribution of the huge number of words... 😉. Although this question, which addresses a dramatic low point in the Steemit history, again cries out for a novel-length answer.

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It must be said at the outset that the fork was accompanied by a multi-million dollar deal when Hive was split off: Ned Scott, one of the founders of Steemit Inc, sold his company to Justin Sun. Already at the beginning, there was talk of a hostile takeover, which was spread by the former witnesses. I did not understand this accusation. Why can't a company owner sell his company? Btw, please don't misunderstand this statement: it was not the blockchain Steem that was sold (that's not even possible), the company Steemit Inc. changed its owner.
That is, a lot of people disliked this deal and wanted the blockchain as it was, to generate a blueprint.

I don't know the background and I don't want to know it, the fact is that after the sale there was talk of fraud, and a lot of white-collar criminal things happened (freezing of stakes, interception of stakes - I really don't know in detail). On both sides - a chain of action and reaction.

The ordinary blogger saw the following: The new owner and his team were not given a chance. They were bullied and insulted in an inhumane way - no matter what they said or did. In addition, almost every blog was polluted by obnoxious spam. Behind this were former Witnesses who were then banned here on the Steem.

I didn't like the idea of being represented on the Hive by people who did that.
In addition, they excluded users from their airdrop (STEEM-Stake = HIVE-Stake) because they had voted "Sun-witnesses". Among them were very respected and loyal long-term Steemians. The whole argument over this was horrible, not something you want to deal with in your spare time.

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Besides, in my eyes, a lot of money ruled here as well. I never liked the idea of "follow the money", but it was quite obvious that a lot of users went to the Hive just to follow the rich witnesses.
Not all of them, of course; that would be a very unfair judgement. Many of my online friends also went to the Hive. I didn't want to lose them and was also a little active there. But so many things and behaviors that had bothered me before on Steemit had moved with “the bees”.
I didn't feel comfortable - it was much quieter on the Steem. More comfortable. Fortunately, many annoying bots were missing (buy-vote bots, coin bots, auto-response bots...).

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The absolute end for me was the point when an unauthorized pirated copy of SteemWorld appeared over there and was happily used. I was so disappointed - especially by many German users who all knew exactly how much time, money and heart, and soul @steemchiller had put into his wonderful tool. I didn't want to be involved with software thieves.

Alas, all that is history. We need to look ahead and focus on building the platform we love.

: What is the difference between Steemit then and now?

🔶Chriddi: There are many differences. Lots of pros and cons.
The biggest difference is that users used to really see themselves as a community. Today, there are far too many "lone wolves" who think the Steemit team is the boss here and will do anything to get a vote from their curator account sc01. But that is just not true. We all are the community and the Steemit team is "just" a part of this community with a high stake.

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:What do you think of the club and burnsteem initiatives?

🔶Chriddi: Oh, my thoughts on this would really go beyond the scope of this article. Only that much:
Both initiatives were set up with a very good approach. But there are two sides to every coin, and so these ideas also provide opportunities for exploitation.

As long as there are users (and unfortunately there are far, far too many) who don't understand why they are burning coins or - more importantly - why they are powering up, and only do so to "please" the sc01, these hashtags will still cost us many grey hairs. So, if you didn't get the point, you didn't get the Steem. We don't need sycophants who always say "yes and amen". By the way, the Steemit team itself also finds this behavior repulsive....

:Wow, thank you for this direct words… 😂,
Maybe it’s time to change the topic… What can you say about the Interview Showcase?

🔶Chriddi: As I have confirmed to you many times, I think your idea is a great format that holds a lot of potentials.
Maybe you shouldn't publish it so often so that the interested readers don't feel overfed. And you shouldn't overload the interview, always remember the limited attention span of your readers. So never invite people like me again.... 😂

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:🤣 You know I won't stop to invite you and by the way, thank you for accepting my request to interview you. Wait a minute, do you like music?

🔶Chriddi: Of course I do. I like classical music, jazz, and pop rock, I love German pop rock (there are very good bands who remembered the great possibilities of our German mother tongue - the language of the most famous poets). But most of all I love a German singer and songwriter called Udo Jürgens (who died 2014). I own about 50 vinyl albums of Udo Jürgens.

:Oh that's great, then I have a surprise for you, maybe that's going to be your favourite... So here we go with "Heute beginnt der Rest deines Leben” by Udo Jürgens