De-Metrifying Steemit
Steemit claims to be a social network. It certainly is like other "social" networks in some aspects, like bubble building, feuds between groups and other horrible stuff.
But while Steemit claims to give everyone rewards based on their producer-merit (a hilarious claim in itself, but let's put this part aside), it totally ignores the basic problems other social networks have as if nothing could be done.
But those problems are not God-given. They are made by human intelligent design.
The core interest of an social network is to get more users and retain them. The way to do this is to constantly emotionally engange the user.
This is done in various ways, but the one that is even more blatantly for Steemit is: upvotes.
Votes in other networks are used to signal you: Someone read your stuff! Or here is something your friends likes. Or some big group. Or... of course "like" often means "it was about something that angered them", because nothing is as engaging as anger.
The goal is clear: more views, because more views = more ad revenue. That is all the "algorithmic optimisation of feeds" etc. is about.
It has been shown that such measures do indeed increase "engagement", but almost exclusivly undesired (from a moral or human point of view) behaviour.
What if we took away the vote counter?
You get what you measure. The complains about the Steem distribution are so many they would blow the Steem chain. The current system is certainly far away from perfect and everyone knows it. But the only thing that happens is that Steemit.inc tinkers a bit with payout times and percentages.
The thing is, that won't solve the inherent problem. People are going to vote based on different reasons than objective worth of the post. Just ask all the curation guilds and trails how much influence they have on the payout. Ask people how much they are in for the curation rewards compared to how much they think about rewarding someone for their good work.
My proposal is to stop doctoring on the symptoms and start healing the patient.
Let's take away all the measurements that show you how many or how much others did. Instead of "payout: X dollar" just show "you voted for..."
I know, I know. It is technically impossible to make that dissapear from the blockchain. But that may not even be important. Because most people don't look at the blockchain. They use some sort of interface, like the website steemit.com.
Change the interface and you change the way people perceive the world.
Get rid of all that attention seeking stuff and only retain the content. Maybe then we get votes based on your real opinion and not based on reward output?
