@surfermarly is right to say that greed has overtaken community spirit on Steemit.
Any new & different community needs to enhance new & different values. For the first year of Steemit this did exist before the avalanche of human greed and bots took over. I also turned a blind eye to the pre-mine, but this has also hurt Steemit badly too. Fair inequality trumps unfair inequality every time. Period.
P.S. Hello @surfermarly if your reading this - I know how passionate you are about this from reading all your comments. Keep up the good fight! :)
Wow, what a sweet way of demonstrating your complicity - thank you so much, it means a lot to me :-)
I really believe that social engagement is still the most powerful tool to build sustainable and self-sufficient communities. The financial reward was actually created as an incentive in order to light up social interaction, value creation and creativity - and not to become the primary goal.
The re in rewards has a meaning...:-)
Steem and all the other tokens that will follow through SMTs are created/will be created to encourage people to participate in communities of their fields of interest. They're designed to bootstrap engagement, profitability and growth.
The idea of tokenizing the internet is to incentivize social interaction and value creation in any type of community all over the world.
Now bidbots try to beat the system, buying people into the community, letting them skip the whole process of social engagement and value contribution. Like that the whole eco-system will be gradually eroded from the inside and the tokens won't be backed by real value anymore.
I really hope we'll find a way back to our initial mission where social interaction and value contribution were our most valuable goods.
Again thanks for your unrivaled support in this manner! :-)
EDIT: In that context I highly recommend everybody to watch this video and especially listen when Ned Scott @ned describes the concept of Smart Media Tokens - they're incentives!
https://steemit.com/steemit/@ruwan/i-filmed-this-video-of-ned-pkattera-and-sneak-talking-about-the-smts-and-the-future-of-steemit
I don't see bots as a replacement for social interaction. For me they are just paid advertisement - no emotional involvement around them for me.
If I pay for Google Ads it also doesn't substitute the fact that what I'm offering has to have a high value for people - and the ROI has to be higher than my initial investment in the ads. Just business.
The fact that social interactions have become a business is also nothing new and it lies deeply rooted in Steem. The first month this has been very strange for me too, but since I have adjusted to some of the basic facts of how this system works, I have found great pleasure in it.
I don't worry much about the downsides of this system, because there is one saying, that I love and work from for many years now:
You can't fake value! Value will always win, because value is defined on the receiver side and you can't argue with that - so why not relax into this knowledge and let others do, what they do best (and so naturally perfect): define the value. For me, this is a huge relief...
We will see true value discovery when exchanges are prevented from pumping the prices of all crypto assets. Then we'll see how valuable everything is really perceived to be.
Bid bots are simply fake it till you make it, everyone is vying for consistent whale votes, and vote buyers do provide some of the price floor for SBD. I would estimate however that 99% of the reason SBD is so insanely priced is pump and dump groups out of Upbit.
I think it is quite different from Google Ads in that the viewer of the ad gets a share of the revenue. Any interaction there can be mined for SP and SBD.
So there is this incentive to interact with the ad because of the potential to make money.
The biggest "ad buys" get the most clicks and most money for least work by the viewer of the ad.
Sounds like a black/grey hat troll farm to me. All we need are a few more bots, right?
I am not on the anti-bot bandwagon, and am a very new user here, I'm just talking in general, big picture ideas. I think bots can be valuable tools in communities.
Google Ads are different because clicking on them only gives the content creator a reward. The BUYER is going to get something, but they'll pay.
When that changes to the buyer being able to extract value from ad participation, it changes the nature of the game entirely. The game changes to "Man, if I could just automate this process and get more voting power..." Which quickly becomes "we need more bots" in a competitive money making environment.
Thanks for the history lesson and great discussion here.
Speaking of financial reward lighting up social interaction, I'm paying people weekly to engage and delegating Steem Power to the best of them :D
Well if the big players are performing one of those jerking circle things, someone's got to do it!
The blogs of the 'Bid-bot fanatics' are generally quite bereft of comments of any value, and so when the goalposts move again, these people will likely suffer the most.
I think this example sums the above up nicely: https://steemit.com/cryptokitties/@brittuf/fancy-cats-should-be-worth-more-soon-on-cryptokitties
'Skip' though, or just covering the cracks for now? :)
I hope you are enjoying your holidays!
I think once the community feature is installed, it will reorganize the whole community. Followership you gain through bid bots is not as strong as the community you build around you through social engagement and interaction. Bots don't go to Steemfest - do they? :-D
I have never understood what cryptokitties are. Is it something like snapchat? Or pokemon? I have a clear opinion about the latter actually:
:-D
Yes I am! 100%.
Cryptokitties is a game that was designed to help people get familiar with making transactions on the Ethereum blockchain.
On the cryptokitties website, you can use Ethereum tokens to buy an avatar of a cat: a cryptokitty. Each cryptokitty has unique traits like the color of its background, stripes, moustaches, etc. The fun part is that you can buy two cryptokitties and breed them to create a new cryptokitty with random traits inherited from its parents. Also, someone can pay you Ethereum tokens to borrow your cryptokitty for breeding.
Does this help?
Oh dear, haha! Do adult people do such things? Seriously?
Yeah that helps, thank you :-)
I am of the opinion that making a worthwhile contribution to the platform is still the absolute best way to become successful here.
Sure, there are bots and people looking to cheat the system, but great content and community engagement will always shine through if we continue to support each other along the way.
My strategy here is to try to reward everyone and anyone who contributes in a positive way to the system. I believe that by banding together, the core members of this great platform can continue to build something special.
Great comment and philosophy, I'd sign every word of it :-)
Is this not normal part of platform evolution? I think Steemit has quite a few people like @surfermarley and @abh12345 and I suppose yourself, who are working to create a culture which is more community oriented. This will always be a challenge with any platform that is rewarding people so we just need to find a way to steer the platform as a community in the direction we want to see it go :)
Hi @lucygarrod, thank you for the invite to Mr @mindhunters Zap and the kind comments within :)
I like the way you steer @lucygarrod :)
😁
... and that 10,000 watt smile too @lucygarrod :))
Ha ha ha, you are funny :)
Do you think it's completely taken over? I agree that there's always a group that try to take advantage of the system. But only having been here since December, I've found steemit nothing but welcoming and community minded. And like anything - the more you put in, the more you get out.
Likewise. It's clear that there are some bad apples on here, but thankfully there is a core of great users who are community minded.
Likewise. I mainly concentrate on the positive aspects, but I keep an eye on the abuse. I'm having great conversations here
Switching from insta for me has been an experience. I still find steemit like old twitter. Real people with real views. And real conversation for the most part. Because of the built in incentive. Shit comments like "nice" just don't cut it....and I think people will figure it out quickly. That said, I think the platform still has room to grow - and interface wise they could build in measures to stop the most egregious behaviours.
It can be hard to maintain quality as it scales up. We want millions on here, but that will mean more spam. I educate new users where I can
Herding the new lambs. Good man.
Personally I don't think that comments like "nice" are bad in and of themselves if they are sincere. Vocalizing that you like something shouldn't be frowned upon. That it's mostly done by people who haven't even read a single article they've said the comments on is a different story.
We won't see an end to behavior that is transparent income-seeking until we see an end to global wealth inequality.
It's hard to have an honest "like" response here. The upvote is so valuable, and crafting a quick comment that doesn't sound like it was spoken in Troll is pretty tough.
I think those "nice" comments are people trying to emulate that honest "like" response.
I know that I have had trouble with language here on simple comments to try to avoid sounding like I was an auto-comment troll.
That everything has a potential economic consequence directly attached to it does muddle things a bit as far as intentions go. I'd often like to just drop a "this was really nice" as opposed to "this was nice" but either will probably be dismissed all the same.
Is going to be interesting to see how this experiment in buying votes pans out. We have freedom in Steemit, but some see that as an opportunity for a quick profit, if buying votes is profitable. The sellers win every time. I just want to see good content get good rewards. I ignore the trending page anyway. I will help in efforts to flag the worst cases of greed. It's the whales who could really deal with it, but many choose not to
now everyone tries to work on bots in steemit which is really hurting.
thanks @mindhunter
Unfortunately, the human factor will always be present where ever there are humans, and there are humans on steemit, obviously. Greed is something deeply rooted in human behaviour of the modern capitalistic world, steemit is only a small example. But there is hope, we just have to stay optimistic and surround ourselves with passionate and positive people. Luckily, there are still people like that everywhere.
Good to hear from you Petra, you help with the mood.
We all help the way we can ;) Sometimes a good pat on the back or a word of encouragement is all a person needs to be even better. So here you go. Have my pat on the back and that famous saying "keep up the good job" ;) Positivity is an underestimated weapon these days. "They" want you to be upset, angry, sad because that gives them power and a thought that "they" have won. As long as you have your smile on, YOU are the winner. Just my two cents of thoughts anyway...I do hope it helps since it is the only way I can help right now :D
As in many other communities, the good will survive the bad (or people with other intentions, bad sounds quite negative). As far as steemit wins popularity there are always people with little knowledge but with the dollar signs (or steem dollar signs as you please) in their eyes. But Im convinced the long run stays for the 'real'deal... Invest in the platform, give back to the community... But keep producing good content... I know I will (or at least try)... For me, I'm putting back in all my earnings in steem power to help other people who have (just as I have and had) a diffcult time beeing noticed... That's the flip side of becoming a populair platform....a lot of people , a lot of posts, a lot to read :).... But we have to watch for it all together and make sure to keep the platform where it is designed for "for people, by people"... Have a great evening all together.. !!
Presently it's "of the devs, by the devs, and for the devs." I think there needs to be a rise of a middle class of content providers/curators to save the community just like the rise of a middle class saved capitalist societies from socialist revolutions. They need to tweak the platform to funnel more steempower to more people. Actually ALLOW the labors of the middle class to be rewarding. Heck, why not delegate some steempower from the pool every time someone rises one point in reputation, then extract that slowly later on when their rep gets to, say 53 (notice how I put it just out of reach of yourself LOL), and don't let them cash out their steempower until they reach that point. Make it a loan and call the loan back if they don't reach some benchmarks in a timely manner that show they are engaged in the community. I think we can all agree that reputation indicates value to the community much better than steempower.
Bitbots can be eliminated in the next HardFork , right? Witnesses can do that, right? Can someone find me witness candidates willing to do that that I can vote for? Can we all rally around said candidate?
And with that, the 4000 Steem Power I've delegated to around 15 accounts for nothing would disappear, along with the delegations to the applications currently driving the Steem Blockchain forward.
People can say what they like about vote buying and bid-bots, but the option to delegate stake to individuals and these applications is what is driving the Blockchain this application sits on.
I am guilty of this myself, but I would advise people not to get too close to Steemit.com, it has been (and still is) the launch pad, but it won't be what takes STEEM to the moon.
All my humble opinion of course.
Wise words! Or as Ned said Steemit is an example on how to build an app on the Steem blockchain.
With regards to delegations, I agree that it's a very powerful tool. As with all types of empowerment, they need to be used in an appropriate way. @stellabelle published an awesome article in that context 3 months back: SP Delegatee Menu To Solve The Vote Selling Problem
With power comes responsibility, even when it's just borrowed :-)
Marly!
You've been missing my blogs I can tell :p
I did the 'responsible' analysis of the the people on that list: https://steemit.com/steemit/@abh12345/dear-stellabelle-potential-delegates-report-1
I ran the stats each week for @fulltimegeek's #stewardsofgondor
https://steemit.com/stewardsofgondor/@abh12345/fulltimegeek-and-the-stewardsofgondor-steemit-appreciates-you
And I run weekly stats on the engagement of my delegates, as well as paying a lot of them to engage https://steemit.com/steemit/@abh12345/58vhut-steemit-the-curation-leagues-sbd-and-delegation-prizes
When 'abuse' has been spotted, the delegation has quickly been revoked, but overall, It's been a fantastic exercise.
Proof being in that many of @fulltimegeek's stewards of gondor, my delegates, and people perhaps wishing to be delegates, are among The 201 most prolific commentators on the Steem Blockchain (2018)
Check the comments on that post (the 6th highest total according to @arcange yesterday) if you wish to see who's really providing the grease to the (b)chain.
Thanks!
I didn't say that it's not taking place, did I? :-)
What about those who received large delegations from steemit: dtube, dlive and utopian-io? I read your analysis about their voting behavior (including curie), but when I look at their stats, their VP is always around 90% or even close to 100%. When I look at my own it's seldomly above 70%, and still I'm short in votes :-)
Wouldn't we expect them to use the delegation to fully spread their power and push as much creators as possible? Maybe it's a question of manpower and their focus is rather on development than curation. In my eyes delegation is perfectly used when maxed out. But you know I'm that romantic content creator :-)
Have a great day Ash!
:)
No you didn't, just making it clear that responsible actions are taking place with delegated SP.
As long as the voting power of the above accounts doesn't hit 100%, then VP is not being 'wasted' as such. Voting power recovers quicker, the higher it is and so this is why it's never too far from the max when you look in the accounts that own millions - they keep a very watchful eye.
I have seen dtube sat at 100% VP for an hour or two at certain times (and badgered the boss about it) which I do see as a waste, both for the owners of this DSP (curation missed) and the content creators seeking votes.
utopian-io do their voting with scripts, on manually approved contributions. The script begins once the VP has returned to 100%, and I think shuts off around 80-85%. (The approved contributions must wait til the following voting cycle).
It's actually the same for the bid-bots in some respects, they have (11?)voting rounds each day, which start when VP hits 100%.
In short, it is the plan to keep VP high, and as long as it's not at 100% (idle) it's all good :)
Have a great day on the slopes too!
How does that look online?
Is it using DLive, DTube, Zappl, etc? Making sure you have a presence there? Staying tuned to the new apps that come online?
I'd love to hear more about the ecosystem in this regard.
Yes those accounts, and the biggest one (currently) @utopian-io.
These apps are rewarding content specific to their applications and are bringing Youtubers, developers, gamers to produce content, and perhaps even invest.
I forgot to mention SMTs, more on @steemitblog's recent post and i've done a couple of hopefully easy starter posts:
https://steemit.com/steem/@abh12345/anyone-who-tells-you-smt-will-not-increase-the-value-of-steem-is-talking-out-of-their-backside
https://steemit.com/steem/@abh12345/smt-for-the-attention-of-vango-com
Don't vote them, they are months old :)
That VanGo case study is very interesting to me.
I have this problem with my content and my business, for sure. We're indispensable within our niche, but there is little culture for paying for knowledge. So we're taken for granted.
SMT looks like it could be a great deal for us as an online content producer and meat space business.
Any links on startup costs and whatnot?
And I went to utopian, but I don't understand what's happening there.
Is it a crowdsourced app development platform? I always check out at GitHub.
I cross my fingers and hope I can get my tarball and get installed. I've installed and admin'd all the big CMS and most of the learning platforms and wikis.
I've got a couple of ideas cooking, been cooking for a REALLY long time... I've been thinking that this community (STEEM) is a place to get them done.
SMT Whitepaper: https://smt.steem.io/smt-whitepaper.pdf
Not an easy read, and no news on release dates - @steemitblog's recent post has further details.
I downloaded it and skimmed it. Super heady stuff. I just want a link so I can give them my dollar and start my empire!
muahahahaaha haha, etc
I actually think SMT is a terrific way to create your 1000 True Fans empire.
I'd like to give it a shot. Nothing else has worked. :-D
I want to try it.
Thanks for the response. I'll check out Utopian...
I think I've read one or two of those. And I seem to be hopeless about upvoting old content. I see it as a meaningful thing, independent of the monetary value. Have to work on that.
I'd vote for them, too :-)
I'd delegate my 30 witness votes to someone who knows who they are and will vote for them.
Maybe the problems lies with how we promote steemit? if we like to have communities that communicates properly then why do we promote our platform in a way that only highlights the incentives?
Because there are plenty of people who want to cash out, and they need plenty of buyers on the buy side of the equation.
Then we cant really complain about who are the people here right now. There are 7B people on the planet why not promote properly... Im currently doing an event right now with this idea.
I can't really complain as long as people are coming in.