Perspective: Steem was meant to be for content creators and consumers
I miss the days when Steem was all about content creators and content curators. Today, it's become a free market for opportunists and developers. There's still some great content here, but few care to reward them anymore. This is understandable, of course, the crypto world revolves around greed, and it's clear where the money is. But that also means, this is no longer the right platform for people like me, who joined Steem for content.
Today, a vast majority of the active Steem Power has been delegated out to vote buying services, developers, and SP rentals. Curators have been squeezed out of the reward pool. Established curation projects like steemSTEM and OCD have minimal delegations, while others like Curie have no delegations at all. Combined with the high SBD price, self-voting has gone through the roof. A year ago, 0.42% of all votes were self-votes. Today, this figure is up an alarming 1,600% to 7%. Mind you, this is all votes - this is perhaps even more dramatic when considering only top level posts. Who could blame them, of course? It's orders of magnitude more profitable to lease SP indiscriminately.
In a nutshell, this has become a platform openly hostile to content creators and curators.
The question, then, does a social platform on a blockchain that pays money for content even make sense? There are two options here -
a) Probably not. This will become a niche market of crypto speculation and opportunism. It'll thrive, probably be a multi-billion dollar blockchain, but it'll never be about content. As an investor, that's quite alright.
b) This is just a fad, and it'll revert back to the good old content-centric days. Hivemind/Communities will be a solid product, be managed well, and Steemit Inc will start delegating to curators just as much as developers. SMTs will ignite several communities.
All the evidence suggests b) is delusional at this stage, and a) is the way that Steem, and indeed, all blockchain projects are headed. I have seen a slow and long descent down this trajectory and don't see any signs of reversal. Still, there's a glimmer of hope things will get better.
Till then, this is no longer the platform for me. Should I leave Steem? Probably. But am I giving up just yet? Not really. Even a small amount of the reward pool allocated to content creators and curators is better than nothing.
(PS: I do get the feeling some have misread my narrative here. So, I should do the responsible thing and point out just as well - Steem is a unique platform with massive potential. I go on this rant only because I believe in Steem. I'm not going anywhere!)
Steemstem that promotes good well written scientific posts that take hours if not days -> delegation from steemit inc=o
Dmania that promotes memes that are stolen or take 1-2 mins -> delegation from steemit Inc = half a million...
Enough said.
Put that way, it fuels even more my irritation lol!
Is there a way we can influence someone into, or do something about changing that balance (as a united Steemstem group for example)?
Damn, just remembered that you wanted some seeds. Can't remember If I replied to you or not, are you on steemit.chat or the steemstem discord?
Don't ask yourself what Steemit Inc can do for you, ask yourself what you can do for Steem.
(note: I do not speak for Steemit Inc, in case anyone mistakenly thought I did/do)
Let me try to bring my two cents to the discussion.
What we (@steemstem) are trying to do: creating a science lover community on the STEEM blockchain. And by this, we have in mind a community including top scientists who can share their knowledge, their work, with the general audience on the blockchain.
By community, we do not only mean promoting good content (which we manage to do more or less anyways, thanks to the support we managed to gather here and there (and for which we are thankful to our supporters)). This also means having people exchanging with each others on the chat, discussing about science, etc... It is a real community. It goes beyond the curation group effort.
Now, what can we do for steem? Well, promoting steem through crazy meetups (like having the first steemstem meetup 100 meters underground inside the LHC at CERN where general public cannot even go, even if they ask...) is something we can do. Some of us have connections in the academic world, allowing this to happen. I like to believe this is something good for Steem. Of course, this is my opinion (probably shared by some of us).
Now to come back to the initial message.... To achieve what we did so far, to get where we are today, I am personally working (yes, we can call that a work at this level) more than 40 hours per week. The same holds for most of the people in our team (we are of about 20 today). Our impression is that Steemit inc (not steem) does not even care about that. We have never heard anything from them. Not a single sound.
This is what @trumpman said. Sometimes it is frustrating to see where the big delegations go, especially knowing the work we do (for mostly free).
That's the most convincing argument I have heard yet for what anyone can do for Steem.
Well said sir!!!
Well, that's what we have been doing for a long time now, and what's we will keep doing, regardless of, if any, the outside support we get :)
Thank you for posting @liberosist.
These are the thoughts we at Steemit will invariably process on as Steemit takes on more and more people. Appreciate your articulating your thought process and compiling it in a composition.
Creme will always rise to the top.....sometimes it just takes a while. ^__^
Some posts which are quality will never be approved by Curie.... however one should not give up........even if not approved by one or more organisations especially if one thinks that they are indeed bringing value to Steemit.
Thank you for the opportunity to think on these things.
Indeed I do hope for Steemit that quality outweighs rubbish every single day.
Cheers.
Interestingly enough, I could have written the exact same post... I totally share your thoughts here.
Curation groups that can really make a difference are barely supported (this can be easily checked by verifying where the big delegations go), the work behind these curation groups (that ranges up to several hundreds of hours a week!) is barely noticed and even less recognized, and so on.
I personally still want to work to make a difference, like all my steemstem colleagues by the way. There is a huge potential on the STEEM platform through the social network facet. I however cannot tell what the future will be. I hope things will change in the right direction.
This became more and more clear to me as I started spending more time here. I personally was able to sink myself into several communities pretty quickly through MSP and Open Mic and eventually Curie, and as a result have been able to earn with my creative posting. But as I rose up in the ranks it was pretty obvious that content creation was not really the name of the game. When I hear people describe Steem as a blogging platform I think that is a poor description. You can blog on Steem, but really that is not what any current iteration of a Steem front end excels at. Absolutely this is a social media network and the social side of the game is what controls payouts, not the content.
For me personally I would create content at more or less the same rate with or without Steem, with or without compensation for it. I blogged for years on two different pen and paper RPG blogs, and I posted music and art to Facebook and yes even Myspace before that. I wasn't doing it for money.
That being said, the presence of money in the ecosystem does change the experience and for me the choice was clear, I have spent more of my energy in curation efforts just because I personally would love to see creative endeavors pay off for people. Truly creative people will create anyway. But wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where artists didn't have to starve? Where the value that art and music and ephemeral culture have in human society is actually recognized? These things are universal for a reason.
I have never been one to give up hope, I look for the clearest path to the result I want to see and I try to actualize that path. I have put my energy toward projects like @curie and my own @r-bot and @humanbot because I think there are enough creative souls out there that this thing can still reach critical mass. I think there is room on Steem blockchain for many kingdoms. There is no reason dmania can't have their corner of memes, and utopian its developers, and dtube and dlive their vloggers, alongside healthy and thriving communities / sub-communities of authors, poets, artists, musicians, film-makers, dancers, crafters, creators. We just have to make it happen. Many of us are actively working toward making it happen.
I know you are one of them @liberosist and thank you for not jumping ship.
Much love - Carl
Carl, I noticed your involvement in the platform for a while now, and what you do here is really admirable. With a little more people like you on Steemit, liberosist probably wouldn't have thought about writting this post.
@liberosist, I really needed to read your words this morning. I had my first strike of negativity about Steemit this week: When I write a post, it's easy 8 to 12 h work of effort to create something new, so I can't post more than twice a week. I don't complain because i do get some payout, but I am starting to be fed up to see low quality content that takes less than 1h to create take such huge fractions of the reward pool. Basically, taking the revenue out of the mouth of real content creators. Is it really worth it? or should I revert back to other content creation platforms where I used to invest time and effort (Udemy, Pond5 etc.).
For now I am sticking to Steemit, because since I discovered it in October, this amazing idea felt like a breath of fresh air on the Internet. I am sticking to it, because I want to see such an idea become mainstream, propelled by the magic of Blockchain tech. I am sticking to it because it also fuels my own creativity. I am sticking to it because coming from the indie music world, I know how it is hard out there, and Steemit does provide a door to success that would otherwise be closed for even the most talented of musician... Iam sticking to it because the revenue incentive allows talented people to take of their time and share their views and knowledge with others etc. Yet, all this provided if the the cancer of greed does not ruin it all...
So I am staying on the boat too, to fight for what I think is a beautiful idea.
You are one of the good ones here for sure @muphy and it is an honor to be in the boat with you! Much love - Carl
Thank you for the kind words Carl :-).
In return, I believe it is people like you that keep the original spirit of the platform alive. There are others too, and I am really glad about that. Together, we are like a force, above greed, living on this platform, trying to protect it.
Maybe we are the seeds of a leftist intellectual branch of anarcho-capitalism :-)!
We could focus all our effort on creating and curating content. But for as long as I've been on steemit, creators and consumers have found the UI/UX too poor to spend a lot of time finding and consuming content (finding being the worst part).
This will have to be addressed before the STEEM can grow into the mainstream. As it seems steemit inc and Ned would rather see alternative front ends and businesses succeed rather than steemit, it makes sense that they will, for the time being, prioritise this as it is crucial for people to actually want to come and consume content here.
I have spent a lot of time with active curation projects. I see what incredible work they do to dig deep to find good content that deserves rewards. However, despite a post being great and thus receiving something like a 50$ worth of upvotes, it still gets next to no views and only a few comments typically by the curation team themselves. Is that sustainable in the long run? Sure, it may help retain quality content creators, but it does little, imo, to make the blockchain more engaging, which will be required for the whole business model and value proposition to hold. Currently, it seems to me that vested upvotes means close to nothing unless you get to trending, so curating content won't do much for the active use of the site unless the user interface and content discovery is drastically different. Which I guess is what we're all hoping for with communities.
Anyways, my point is that if steemit inc would rather see other Apps solve this problem, or know that it will eventually be solved with communities, then what we see currently does make sense.
My brother is a computer genius and has been into blockchain tech since 2013. as a hobby only. Weirdly he didn't know about steemit. I discussed about it at Christmas with him (I discovered Steemit in October).
Yesterday he told me that he finally received his a super server with impressive characteristics. He bought it to run a Steemit node.
With the Steem blockchain at his finger tips, he asked me what app would be the most useful for the community. I didn't hesitate: An explorer to search and classify content.
I hope he will have time to look into it. Maybe we could implement a star system independant from the payouts and that would be in control by a high quality curation system like Curie, Steemstem and others. If we moves forward with the idea, I will post to get input from the community.
Sounds great. Personally, I don't see a future in content being ordered based on vested votes. It may make sense in terms of making the STEEM token and STEEM Power valuable, but it doesn't result in content that people want to consume being brought to them naturally.
The best would be a front end where people can subscribe to curators, not just follow people. Then one could create a feed that prioritizes content discovered and upvoted by the curators you like. Perhaps I want one feed where I can see whatthe people I follow are up to, and another where I am given content upvoted by a selected few curators I believe finds what I would like to find myself.
That is just a great idea. I would even go up to proposing 3 feed tabs:
1/ The current feed based on people one follows (i.e. like a set of TV channels)
2/ A curator feed as you suggest, basically that would contain trusted guilds like Curie or Steemstem and Steemians that re-steem a lot things of interest to oneself. Quality curation guilds should be funded in delegated SP by Steemit.inc.
3/ A personal favorite feed, that contains the people a user interacts a lot with and does not want to miss anything about.
All this would be on the personal dashboard: The follower would know he is followed by the user, yet without knowing in what category he or she was placed in.
In my opinion, that could allow, in time, an improvement in the quality of the content viewed and rewarded, and encourage authors which are consistent in quality. Those of the followers that really like a content creator's work would be able to make sure never to miss anything...
And all this in addition to a real search engine (note to self: bug my bro so he gets really into it ;-))
All these are great ideas, but it's actually kinda funny how obvious a subject-subscription layout of some kind - any kind - should be a thing. Much of the mainstream websites offer this, from Twitter to Linkedin, wordpress to minds.
People don't want to browse through random shit for an hour to find a couple of things of interest. People don't want to be told what they might want without any prior context. Even facebook, wechat and Windows 'learn' what you like with experience watching your every move.
I want to join Steemit, meet like-minded people and read things that I personally find intriguing... it's not that hard =/
I am still hopeful that at some point good content will be rewarded accordingly. I am just here for almost 50 days and I am proud to say that I provided good contents (got curie'd once) but most of the time my content are hanging in mid-air. Then there are others who just posted a meme or a grabbed photo, original photos but blurred, low quality yet they are earning better than my posts.
Is it safe to say unfair?
Agree that good post will be rewarded but this is not a case if you are new user. Main problem of Steemit is that new users without money invested in SP will advance very hard. Their posts, even great ones will hardly be seen.
@cicbar: One reason with the struggle is the misconception. Those who invited them to steemit gave high hopes of earning huge.
I am not talking about earnings. Look how many views, not votes, have posts from new users without SP even if they are really good posts.
It’s discovery that is the issue here. Building subtags and a good follow list helps, but if you’ve only got Trending and Hot to guide you, it’s quite a slog. Curation accounts can only do so much. Also doesn’t help that Steemit tends to only return the last 7 days worth of posts in the tag views. Yeah, stuff is outside of the reward window (comments still accrue), but sometimes I just want to read stuff and see people!
Agree😁
Does SP somehow get your posts in front of more eye? I’m pretty new and had some support through curie, but when I look at my articles the amount of people actually looking at them is pretty low.
No but with high SP your vote is worth more and if you comment or post something and upvote yourself, your comment or post will be at higher place.
There's no concept of fairness in a free market like Steem. That said, if there were a 100 Curie-like curation projects and individual curators, maybe a lot of really good content will be discovered. Steem does offer curation rewards for that.
I truly agree sir. I just hope also that these new curation efforts doesnt require payments just like curie.
There's a lot of plagiarism going around, but if it's about money, what can you do? There will be constant influx of people, who see this platform as a $ making machine, but without the good content there's no future for steemit really as the value of steem can only go up in the long term if steemit becomes valuable through its content. Also how much can you speculate on crappy or stolen posts? I fully believe it's possible to solve this problem through community action or another hard fork.
Let's hope for that @conradino23 and also, maybe helping out @steemcleaners do their crusade to combat these low quality stuff
hell i found a 50word short story the other day that stole a famous line attributed to Hemmingway. The poster tried to be all, "i didn't know" and "I changed it".
Changed one word. Still got like $5 for the post. Pft.
Real content is rarely rewarded but projects that focus on cheap and dirty content is often over rewarded. To create content take effort for thought and unfortunately, "ain't nobody got time for that", they would rather post a stolen meme and get an $80 upvote for it, or an arbitrary update to some project and get $900.
Those that are producing decent content are getting squeezed out of the system and in favor of what every other platform already offers for free. Sure it may attract more users in, but quality of user matters and unfortunately, here there are many leeches at every level of the food chain.
People want as much as possible for as little work as possible.
If looking long, the platform and indeed the future of work cannot last this way as essentially without real content, nothing moves and it becomes a tired and wornout concept with no value.
I have done my best, do my best and will continue to do my best to produce content of value across several areas but, who actually cares?
some still do. though not enough.
There are some but how many are really willing to support great content anymore and if there is no support, who is going to write it? I could earn just as much bid-botting a selfie as spending hours thinking and developing each article.
How are those who produce consistently meant to compete long-term?
I feel you brother.
What i tell myself is that perhaps Steemit (the website) has reached a large enough size that simply having good content isnt gonna cut it anymore. New users are constantly coming in, and with them more "competition" of to everyone's attention. of course, im not denying the bad side of human greed though that really represents a small portion of the users (influential as they are).
I like to believe that Steem is now at a size larger than we all can comprehend, there's always activity going on now. We might one day see an ecosystem akin to Medium.com, Instagram, even Youtube or Facebook, where the rules will be nothing like we have now.
As for the "passive income" SP abusers that delegates to bid bots, im positive that soon the ROI wont be as pretty, and people start jumping off the bid bots in search for higher gains opportunity. As for trying to keep Steem a "gift economy" platform (as coined by @stellabelle), we all know what to do. Most of us just dont do it because well..... it doesnt pay much.
But who knows, things might turn around.
As for me, i'm honestly still think myself as starting out and learning the social media game.
The problem is that once creativity is squashed, it becomes a grey army of mediocre.
well... creativity and quality (from a content point of view) is fully subjective.
I can love a meme image over how meta and dank it is and it can be poop to others, maybe it is poop and is exactly the reason i like it at that particular moment.
I've never made big money with my content so far and i'm okay with it. I know there are people that supports my work and its a matter of finding the right crowd that loves what i do. or maybe what i do needs to be improved, or more people needs to know what i do.
Still, looking at the big picture, knowing how things are like out there for content creators. I rather stay here and make the best of it.
Well, as a minnow who has benefited from your curative efforts in the past, I certainly hope you stay around and fight the good fight. The rant's totally understandable, and it sucks, but pressing forward and doing what each of us can is the only thing that, at the end of the day, can change anything. :)
Maybe it was never really about content. I hope that isn't true, but we have to consider the possibility. If you wanted to set up a system that rewarded content purely on the basis of quality, would you create steemit as we see it today?
I like to think that steemit's ability to attract new users is based on quality content, but when I look at other social media, that strikes me as a little naive.
As for your situation, that's your call. But I'd be sad if the number of people here who actually cared about content, including yourself, dwindled away - because you are right, when that happens, steemit will stagnate, and there won't be any point in being here - not for me at least.
Quality is subjective, and yes, in the early days a lot of SP was devoted to upvoting content people liked. Now, most of it is self-voting, renting to random people, vote buying services, etc. So, yes, it was about content when first imagined.
A friend told me the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. While extrinsic (money & fame) motivators are attractive and will lead you to do things you don't normally do, it's not sustainable. Intrinsic (passion) motivators will allow for consistency - an important thing to have when you're in it for the long term.
Assuming that Steemit will last for a considerable amount of time and that the passionate creators remember that their worth isn't tied to the number of upvotes they get, they will stay.
But then again, the chances of these assumptions happening at the same time is low. But like you, I'll hold on to that little glimmer of hope.
It's still early days. Content creators should absolutely stay and build their audience on Steem.
I'm glad I was able to join steemit when the value of both steem and steem dollars were below $1 USD. That way, I was able to observe how steemians behave in both situations.
I always motivate my fellow steemians to always make quality contents regardless of the payout. But I sometimes feel down when I see those drama in the trending page. I'm somewhat disgusted to see that those who are supposed to set examples due to their reputations and SPs are those who abused their power.
Like @thegaillery and @legendarryll, I still have that glimmer of hope that those who make quality contents will stay in the platform. In @bycoleman's words, as long as quality contents are sorted, curated, and well-compensated, Steemit will grow and thrive. I still have hope that others will follow the example set by Curie.
Let's just hope for the best and cross fingers that the Tragedy of the Commons will not totally engulf Steemit as it did in the real world.
Ahh! The Tragedy of the Commons. I really hope not!
Building your audience seems like a good goal to tie your Steem efforts to.
Adding to this, research shows that giving people money as a reward for volunteer work is dangerous because they tend to forget their intrinsic motivation. And the extrinsic motivation will usually be too small to motivate them, unless it's worth a full salary.
This is interesting, @edb. I'd like to observe how this affects people around me, too.