I have been following Steem for nearly 3 years now. It has been an interesting experiment. As a mainstream social network, it has been a failure. However, as an open market of content, it works. Not well, but it works.
Nevertheless, the question posed here is - does a social network actually benefit from being on a blockchain?
Let's look at what the mainstream social network audience want, and contrast it with what Steem currently offers -
- Convenience. Obviously, Steem fails at this, it's far too complicated, there's no easy way to sign up instantly. Password recovery, account recovery, all far too challenging.
- Content discovery. People just want to find good content and like-minded people to interact with. Steem's content sorting is not just suboptimal, it's almost worse than random. Steem is not a battleground of good ideas, but a game for the wealthy. It's a bizarre dystopia straight out of BioShock or Animal Farm.
Now, let's consider the purported benefits of blockchain social:
Censorship resistance. That's one perspective. Another is an invitation to unmoderated hate speech, illegal content etc. Most people don't want to read disturbing bullshit, they just want to find and consume the content they want. Steem can certainly form a niche among child pornographers and neo-Nazis, who would be banned elsewhere, but we are talking about the mainstream audience here. So, this is not really a benefit; rather a major drawback tying into content discovery - the lack of moderation and curation.
Privacy. This one is a misnomer. Steem has zero privacy by its very nature. 100% of every interaction you have with the Steem blockchain is 100% public and 0% private all the time. Anyone can do whatever they want with your data, at any time.
Tokenisation. Aha, so this is the USP for blockchain social, then. Dishing out inflation to content creators has proven to be unsustainable, however there's clearly potential to have a market of transparent advertising etc.
Moderation and curation are key to any social network. The first step would be to totally eliminate any common social space or reward pool. It's not going to work. Instead, one solution would be to create a blockchain platform, which can host various different types of social networks. Think Ethereum/EOS for social networks; rather than Bitcoin for social networks. Have one utility token, which will only be used to pay for computing resources/bandwidth etc. It'll also form as a market for attention etc.
On this, entrepreneurs can build their own social networks, and the free market will decide which ones work best. Some can be like Steem, some can be fully centralised; while I'd wager the successful ones will be hybrid that'll learn from the best of both extremes. Each can have their own UX, curation, gamification, moderation, tokenisation models etc. This leaves the burden of innovation on the free market, rather a group of disparate individuals who struggle to agree and get things done collectively. Who knows, maybe one dApp on this platform will come up with a brilliant idea that'll finally make blockchain social go mainstream.
So, why would they bother, when creating their own network could potentially be cheaper, especially the centralised ones? The answer lies in being part of a tokenised attention economy, assuming the base platform can foster one. It's a long shot, but it's the only way I can see a blockchain social network making any sense for the vast majority of people.
I see you are still here throwing truth bombs. :)
Good to see you are still around, even though i might not agree with everything you wrote. hehe
I hear this one a lot. It’s gotten so bad for tags like gaming if people are not using a dapp that has a filter or a third party site to sift through stuff. They are going give up trying wade through all the spam of battle reports, high game scores, and matches are starting soon posts among other things.
The biggest issue I see that mainstream has nailed down is metrics on how content is performing. You don’t even get a view count here unless you are using a dapp that has it and then it’s only for that app. A large amount of votes are auto or trails or bought so that not a big indicator either.
If I contact a company wanting to do a review on their product I have no real numbers to give them if I’m using my Steemit links. Also as you pointed out its far too complex to start explaining. Even more so to non-crypto business people who don’t have all day and need to make a quick decision.
I don’t know too much about Snax (link to their websites roadmap) but they are looking to tokenize across many different platforms: steemit, twitter, reddit, youtube and so on.
Well, here the metric for how content is performing is supposed to be by how rich your voters are.
This post was more about a fully blockchain-based social network, rather than an overlay solution like Reddcoin, Snax or BAT. But yes, it can be argued that overlay tokens let people continue to use whatever they are using, just adding a bonus.
Spot on mainly - a social media platform will never be a mainstream success on a blockchain at least not when a reward pool is involved. It is simply not working, so unlink the reward pool from the social media posting stuff that gets rewards for posting shit here. The blockchain will benefit from good Apps or DApps moving forward -focus on them and the prize might go into a better direction.
In general, I agree. However, before dismissing the reward pool entirely, maybe there's a better method of allocating rewards.
The real creators and builders of apps that make the blockchain a better place should be rewarded but no idea how this can be implemented and based on what (stakes / reps)? I still have some hope - are communities comign and will they help? Maybe allocate reward to comunnity leaders that have to apply / proof their capability?
Seeing the STEEM Blockchain through the perspective of one dApp seems so limiting from one who claims a long history with STEEM. Perhaps my short STEEM vision will broaden your on-chain horizons. 😎
I'm not talking about any dApp, but rather a blockchain platform.
To me Condenser is just a very big dApp, yet your point is well taken.
Sure, but this was not about Condenser at all. I was talking about a blockchain level platform and used Steem as an example.
My misunderstanding. 👍
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