YouTube is monetized as a result of ad revenue and money is paid to users as a result. This is the case for many, many social media platforms.
Hive/Steemit, on the other hand, whether intentional or not, has become a mix of:
- Paying yourself with your voting power, a power defined by the blockchain itself, which is proportional with your stake in Hive
- Tit for Tat voting, where the minnows upvote the whales or dolphins and comment in hopes of getting noticed and paid
- Some legitimate upvote purely as a result of interest in a given article
Can that work? Does power corrupt?
I'm starting to think that #1, by its very nature, will corrupt and bias a person to vote for themselves or come to an agreement with another equivalently staked person to vote for each other. #2 has created an echo chamber of yes men on these social media platforms, something that is its own form of censorship, despite the alleged core values of the platforms. #3 is great, but how common is it? I don't have the time to study this closely, but one could probably check the top 1000 accounts by voting power and see if they have a trend of voting for people who vote for them of similar value or vote for themselves more often than not.
Now, the price increase of HIVE/STEEM too, will rely, essentially, on people not selling what they earn... aka, it relies on people not being paid for what they do as a creator on a social media site. The price could hypothetically remain stable if people cashed out steadily AND there were buyers who believed they could make money utilizing one of the 3 methods above who were willing to buy it. This could potentially happen, but is this social media platform a better place to make money than if you are successful on a site such as YouTube, Instagram, etc.? If not, would those willing buyers continue to come? Finally, if they don't come, if further buyers don't love this platform and see its value, then unless no one sells ever (aka no one makes money), this is by definition doomed to become a worthless crypto, as a result of a mix on inflation and sell off.
Yeah, decentralization is great; less censorship, also great (although I pointed out the artificial censorship caused by point #2, where people hold their tongues for fear or a desire for some pennies), but are those important enough for creators and, MORE IMPORTANTLY, viewers, to flock here?
Additionally, one of the final potential horrid problems is that everyone wants to cash out eventually. This would only ever not be the case if Hive/Steem was accepted as a currency for every day goods and services, which is what people use currency for. Noting that, unless someone perceives their ability to continue to make money as a result of the 3 reasons above, they have no reason to continue stake and have every reason to sell. NOTE, INCREDIBLY IMPORTANTLY, that this is not the case for ad based sites, such as YouTube. They will always be able to generate revenue for themselves and authors because outside advertisers are willing to pay them in a consistently accepted currency (AKA US Dollars, or whatever universally accepted currency they are paid in) to advertise their products, a payment they WOULD NOT make unless they believed they would get a return on their investment in advertising. It is not a 'generosity' transaction. It is a business transaction for a business, as it is between businesses and consumers that an economy moves and currency switches hands.
A popularity contest will always bring out the manipulators. This is true in everything, everywhere, all the time.
The fix for the platform is two fold:
So, in my opinion, HIVE should have two sets of coins... one set for staking and one set for trading. The staking set of coins float, while the trading coins would be some sort of pegged stable coin... either to USD like TETHER or multiple blockchain coins like DAI.
Thanks for joining the discussion!
Regarding your first point, do you mean something other than the upvote percentage, as that isn't clear on the amount of value you'll be tipping?
Also, I'm personally keeping in mind that in the last 3 days there has been a competition for who can have the most HIVE on Huobi, where the winner gets 100,000 HIVE. Now, that may not be the only reason for the increase, but it likely has been part of it. The competition ends April 28th; we will see what the price does after that point (it would be great if the increase was sustained or continued of course!).
But yeah, it is a VERY good point that a lack of stability in transfer of value is seemingly a problem too and something that makes it a more risky investment vehicle for would-be creators who know they can earn a stable currency on a different platform. Risky is only good if you happen to be on the positive end of that, where the price increases after you invest.
I completely agree with your first sentence and that is clear no matter the social media platform. That said, do you think the 'no advertising revenue' issue is a problem? Is an economy that is solely based on the participants of a social media platform (and no outside investors) voting and trading with each other sustainable without a steady addition of users who want to buy in and stake?
I would suggest removing all rewards for number of upvotes as well as curation rewards. Replace all these timed and manipulated voting and reward systems with a tipping button that is tied to a stable coin on the HIVE blockchain.
A tipping button may seem duplicative, since one can simply send a favorite content creator some HIVE directly with a public message about enjoying the writer's content. However, PeakD has improved the idea and correctly guessed the appropriate social aspect of a tipping button. Their button shows the users who have tipped... and the tip value is stable at 0.990 HIVE. This fixes most the problem.
Brave's BAT ecosystem works a little better by adding the ability to tip in three set values of BAT. However, BAT is missing the social approval aspect.
An ideal system would allow an arbitrary tip sent in a stable coin and publicly recorded at the location of the content.
Good content is written because people want to share.
Poor content is written because people want to manipulate the voting system.
The same is true of other and older reward systems for creating and sharing content and ideas... the patent system and copyright systems are broken in a similar way. The idea that people will only be willing to share if paid to do so is faulty.
Unfortunately, in social media platforms, those who run the platform should be separate from those who utilize the platform. This does not mean that those who run the system should participate in the system. Rather, it means that two separate systems of rewards are needed. Those who run the system should not be able to manipulate the content creation rewards.
Two coins, two separate reward systems.
The rewards for staking HIVE should be tied to platform metrics. The rewards for content creation should be tied to reader satisfaction. One coin can not span both reward systems.
To be clear though, I don't think that people will only be willing to share if paid to do so. I think that they'd be more willing to share on a platform where they share in the revenue created by the platform. On YouTube that happens because they are attracting additional viewers which generate that revenue. That additional willingness leads to a competitive environment that spawns extremely well-produced content. Seemingly, only as an act of revolt (OR as a risky, speculative investment, with you betting that the crypto would go higher) might other, equally well-produced content appear here, since the financial incentive (aside from revolting against 'the powers that be' (google, facebook, etc.)) is greater (or at the very least more stable) on other platforms. Most people care more about a better life for their families and so will make informed financial decisions to the best of their ability to move them toward that better life.
People can also tip on sites like YouTube, Twitch, etc.; but advertisers will pay for the eyeballs that are attracted, something that doesn't occur here unless the eyeballs attracted decide to pay you with their own money. Whereas they get YouTube content for free and the only thing they'd pay for (not including if they tip) would be if they like a physical or digital product that is being sold by an advertiser, in which case they get something in ADDITION to the content, rather than paying for the content itself.
Which leaves viewers with a pretty easy decision (unless they are again acting out of revolutionary idealism):
As it currently stands, at the very least, Hive and Steemit are both so far and away below the levels of performance of YouTube and other Social Media teams (reasons for that are many, but obviously a huge team and financial backing for the other ones allows for more performant systems) that unless there is much better content on here, I don't see the masses flocking here (of course, I could be very wrong about that due to something I'm missing and of course if the performance and content quality hits the modern day standard, that could change as well).
They for sure will need some incentive to come here, as viewers. Note, that I'm just referring to how it currently stands, not necessarily how it would land if your resolution proposal was implemented! :)
I appreciate you adding to this discussion though. It is good to see that some people believe the problem can be resolved and I appreciate you proposing a resolution!
I'm on the fence about whether it can be fixed, but your points for sure seem like they'd be a step in the right direction!