January 29th: Nine Years of Steemit!

Today — January 29th — marks the ninth anniversary of when I made my account here on Steemit!

Not to be boastful, but I am pretty impressed with myself for actually sticking to something for that long… but I suppose it’s also testament to Steemit’s longevity that there is still something here to participate in!

To say that things have changed since I first started would the understatement of the century!

Yes, things have definitely changed… some for the better, some for the worse. And some change — a fair bit of it, actually — is simply a reflection of the way online content is constantly changing and evolving.

Like many content creation sites, perhaps the biggest ”crisis” Steemit deals with is the proliferation of AI generated content, and how to treat that content.

While I agree that AI is an increasingly inevitable part of the digital landscape, I’m also of the persuasion that I want ”honest labeling;” that is, I want to know whether what I am reading was created by the original mind of a person, or is simply an instantly created aggregation of what’s already out there, regurgitated to ”sound like” it came from a human.

Does it truly matter?

For me, it matters from the perspective of my willingness to send my few cents worth of upvote to a person as a reward for spending minutes or hours in the creative state, vs. a machine that spent a fraction of a second emulating a person.

Trust me when I say that I actually think AI is very cool… when used appropriately.

For example, recently a good friend’s life was saved by AI, because the access to vast amounts of medical information was able to distill her symptoms and medical history into a diagnosis that not only turned out the be true, but that a half-dozen doctors had not been able to arrive at.

Similarly, I am very grateful for the AI that helps me do my small business bookkeeping and tax filings, because it knows all the legal ways to save on my taxes.

I just can’t get behind the idea of still calling the human creative process ”creativity” when it was simply a machine-driven summary!

Otherwise… I shall refrain from complaining about the bargain basement price of the Steem token because… well… crypto (except Bitcoin) is pretty much perpetually in the basement, these days.

But let’s remember that this was always a bit of an uphill struggle because most people lured here on the ”get paid for creating content” premise arrive here with the idea that they will be rewarded, and then they are going to ”sell” those rewards so they can go somewhere and buy pizza, or mobile service, or new shoes. That’s simply the nature of the beast, and it has been no different at other ”get paid for content” sites online, dating back all the way to the late 1990s.

And yes, I was part of those, as well.

One of the good things is that there is still a decent core community of human beings here, who are hanging in there and sharing real life stories, and leaving real comments and engaging with each other.

Perhaps the infamous ”split” from many years ago also became its own positive, in the sense that Steemit became a truly global venue as a result, rather than one heavily skewed towards native English speakers.

Although I do know English fluently (since about age 10), my native language remains Danish.

I’ve written a lot here… and am currently closing in on 2,300 top level posts… and almost 16,000 comments left on other people’s posts — almost a 7-to-1 ratio — so there’s clearly something interesting and comment-worthy to read here!

So, now I enter what’s effectively my 10th year here… and I wonder what sort of year it’s going to be. And what sort of reflections will I be writing, at the end of year 10?

I guess we’ll just have to hang around and find out!

Thanks for stopping in to read my stuff, and have a great Friday!

How about YOU? How long have YOU been on Steemit? Do you plan to keep going, here?Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2026.01.30 00:35 PST
x1037/2271