"When the tide goes out, you find out who was swimming naked"

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One thing I am very happy about is the drop in the price of steem. The reason I am happy about it is because it wakes people up. When people make more money than they expected, many tend to get lazy, greedy, or flippant with it.

"Steem prices screem higher, for at least a short time."

As the price of STEEM rose dramatically, some interesting dynamics occurred. The early investors and users found themselves sitting on a virtual cash machine, at least for a few months!

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Notice how much time the price of STEEM has traded between $0.00 and $2.00.... If you step back and look at the graph above, you will see that roughly 90% of the time has been spent at this level (illustrated in the red box).

"Bots bots everywhere, and not a human in sight!"

The spike in price for a few months did however lead to all kinds of cool and not so cool systems to be built. And as many are well aware, the bots appear to have taken over. We have bots for almost everything now. We greet the newbies with bots. We sell our votes to bots. We buy our votes from bots. We even curate with bots.

"What is Steemit?"

Many people have come and gone in the short time that I have been here (that's called "churn"). And the humans that I talk to on a regular basis seem to get frustrated at the lack of attention they get. They work for hours to make a quality post and format it properly, and then they post it and are lucky to make $1. They then wonder, why should I spend my time making a good post and engaging with others when I can just use the bots to multiply my money!

So this raises the question, "what is steemit?". What do the whales want? What is the answer by the people that control the platform, the witnesses?

"Are we a social network or are we a bot gaming system?"

I would say most of the lower level newbies and minnows come here with the idea that steemit is a social network. But within a few months, those that survive realize that the real way to make money here is to figure out how to "game" the bots. I am no different. Sure I do my best to make good posts and "engage" others, but honestly I make far more from finding the loopholes in the system and "gaming" the bots.

What do you want me to do?

Since you (the witnesses and whales) get to decide what this place is, what do you suggest we focus on in order to build the long term value of the platform? Where do you want us to spend our time and efforts?

Am I worth more to you helping to build up our communities like @newbieresteemday @greetersguild @friendsofgondor @newbiegames or would you rather I focus my attention on finding the flaws in the system and gaming the bots?

Essentially what do you want people to think of when they say "I'm on steemit"... Are we a social network or are we a bot gaming system?

"Witnesses and whales, you reap what you sow!"

I said in the beginning that I'm happy the price came down. Because when the tide goes out, you do find out who has been swimming naked.

When people make more money than they expected, many tend to get lazy, greedy, or flippant with it.

This is exactly what happened to many early adopters that have found themselves very flush with cash. The price rise led to laziness, greediness, and some just downright tossing the money around with no rhyme or reason. The consequences of these actions are what has shaped the system.

Face it, if the witnesses and whales continue to use their power to reward bot gaming activities at the expense of supporting community building networks like @curie @steemcommunities @qurator or even smaller ones like @helpie @asapers and hundreds of others too, then it will achieve the results that have been incentivized. If you are happy with the "churn" of people that come and go, and don't want to be a social network; then by all means continue on the path you are on. A bot gaming system we will be!

Just remember people aren't stupid for long... They learn and adapt at amazing speed.

"Two first steps for witnesses and whales if you want to fix the system."

If the witnesses and whales want to be a social networking platform, they could fund and support any of the communities that have largely been ignored. You could of course ask me which are the good ones and I would tell you, but there is an easier way. Asher @abh12345 runs reports on curation and engagement, its called Asher's League of Excellence. He lists the top 300 "engagers" in that league every week. Those are the people you should want to support. If they are engaging, then they are the future influencers. And the influencers are who build any network out.

The second step that should be taken is to put the ACTUAL facts in the bot replies. Instead of telling people "congratulations you were just upvoted x%" which seems really good to many people but is useless and misleading, you should instead say "you received an upvote and the loss (or gain) to you at the current steem price of $y was x%". Since 15 of the top 20 witnesses also own bots, then this small step of truth and honesty will show that you care about the "consumer" and that you are interested in more than your own profits. The elimination of this misleading information will lead many to stop using the bots, causing a drop in demand, thus many of the bad bots will go away. We would be left with a healthier and more straight-forward system that would require less investigation and leave more time for social interactions too!

"Lets Talk Witnesses is coming soon to give the people access to the witnesses."

We at @newbieresteemday are happy to be presenting a series of witness interviews in the very near future. We have already lined up witnesses like @yabapmatt @steemcommunity @qurator and we have many more in the queue. We have a list of questions for each witness to answer, but the one I will want to ask most is this:

"What is Steemit, A Social Platform Or A Bot Gaming System?"