I've been on Steemit for about 18 months, joining in January, 2018. When I started I had read as much as I could about the platform and thought it would be a good place to get started doing some writing, and it has been. From the reading I believed there would be curators randomly selecting articles that were being written until the had found a large enough group of authors to meet their goals but still be manageable. Probably a naive assumption on my part, although I imagine there are some out there that do this. I had visions of almost a Utopian environment in which content creators and curators worked together for the betterment of both groups. Utopia, that should have been my first clue that it wasn't going to be what I imagined, but I missed that clue.
After months of growing more and more disillusioned with Steemit, I have decided Steemit wasn't a long term plan to develop any writing skills I might have. Part of my disillusionment comes from the fact the curators with large SP balances don't look around for content creators they find interesting but have lower SP balances. It seems as though those with extremely high SP balances simply upvote each other leaving the peasants with low balances to fend for themselves. There's no way to develop any endeavor without some form of constructive feedback, either good or bad.
When I first started reading about curating on Steemit, I expected to find articles about how to identify potential in new authors or about different methods of finding those interesting authors. Instead, the vast majority of the articles on curating were about how long to wait after a post has been published to vote on it to optimize the curation reward. I found out about automatic voting that allowed you to place votes without ever having to read the post in question, just get the curation reward.
I read about buying votes. I was educated that buying votes on Steemit was equivalent to advertising. By advertising your posts I was told, more people would read your work and you would receive more feedback, what a joke. I also read about making a little SP by selling your votes. This works OK, as long as you have enough SP to make your vote usable. I began to see Steemit is not set up to assist new users hardly at all. New users, you know, those with virtually no SP but represent the future growth of Steemit.
I finally bought into Steemit enough to get my SP balance high enough to start buying and selling votes. I originally started buying votes through Minnowbooster and then moved to SmartSteem. This helped a little, not much but a little. Throwing in more money helped even more. It may not be the only way to grow in Steemit, but it certainly is the fastest if you have the money to invest. To bad for me it's been a bad investment, but you win some and you loose some.
This brings me to HF21 and the further disillusionment with Steemit. In my opinion, cutting the author rewards shows just how out of touch those in charge of Steemit are with how hard it is to get started and build a decent account in Steemit. What it does allow is for them to sit back with their automatic voting and watch the Steem roll in at a faster pace. It would also solve any disagreements about who wrote more posts or comments for their buddies to upvote, since now it doesn't matter since they each get an even cut. If you haven't read them there are comments on the post Help Test Hardfork 21! by @tincho and @drutter that give other views on this move.
Even with all this I had decided to tough it out until Steem had another spike in it's price and cash out, hopefully, totally during the up and down movement of the spike. That was my intention until my previous post Human Rights. In the comments of this post I was downvoted by @honusurf and @coininstant (@firealien), not for the content of my post but because I used bidbots by @ngc. I had no clue what they were talking about but figured out they didn't like my use of Smartsteem for upvotes. Because of some petty, probably adolescent feud they are having, I got drug into the mix. This type of abuse is uncalled for!
Not knowing anything about @ngc, I took a look at his posts and comments he had made. It's true he's not the type of person I would ever have a beer with at a bar but I worked my whole career with people in that same category, and I never drug anyone else into any disagreement between me and the people I didn't care for. I also checked the accounts of @honusurf and @coininstant(@firealien) and again found them to be people I wouldn't have a beer with. Just three guys out to cause problems for people and add little to the community (other than @ngc's SmartSteem). Based on their wirtings here on Steemit, I can easily imagine these three individuals as being young males in their 20's still living in Mom and Dad's basement and calling themselves men and being proud of all the "good work" they did today. I still don't know how or why they are associated with Steemit, and really don't care anymore.
Flagging posts was bad enough, but when Steemit changed it to downvoting, this type of abuse was more enabled. From what I have read it seems this type of abuse will only get worse with HF21, way to go Steemit! You guys are on top of it. Is there a contest to see who can come up with the idea to push content creators away from Steemit the fastest? I would suggest, when you come up with the next "idea" to improve Steemit, think through it, develop the concept with some details, then do the exact opposite.
A platform for sharing information without censorship is a great idea. However there has to be some rules put in place to prevent abuse. Steemit strives to be all inclusive letting the crowd reward ideas they like and take away from ideas they don't like. In my opinion, part of the cost of Steemit being all inclusive has been at the expense of civility.
Upon experiencing my abuse I took several days to deliberate my next action. I had already decided that Steemit wasn't worth staying with long term but it would be good to see the price of Steem spike to return some of the money I had invested. At this point I have serious doubts Steem will ever spike again, just continue its slow decline into the abyss of good ideas that were poorly executed. Your running Steemit like a socialist country in which those in power reap the majority of the benefits leaving commoners to fend for themselves. They keep taking and taking until the country is in ruins, look at Venezuela. Socialism has never worked in a country and it will never work as a business model. As for me, comrades, I'm going to seek asylum somewhere else.
Un abrazo, si estás hoy por aquí como yo, quizá tengas una esperanza de ver cambios.
Yo, navego en aguas a las que llegué estando a la deriva, si encontraste asilo en algún otro lado cuéntame cómo te va y si compartes conmigo que nos encontramos, románticamente, creyendo esta utopía del valor del contenido y la certeza de que es la única forma de salvar algo de humanidad, quizá nos volvamos a leer por estos rumbos. Esperando nuevos vientos, aunque nuestra posición no sea tan relevante como para lograr cambios (lo digo por mí), será siempre un gusto leerte y valorarte.
As soon as @ned started powering down, so did I. For me that’s when I knew it was over.
I don't follow all of the internal politics of Steemit so I really didn't know. It's obvious to me now though.
Hey, wanna know a fun fact? Several of the Winesses have referred to authors on the site as being "Marxist" because apparently the authors aren't supposed to be rewarded for their work as it's the "Block-Verifiers" who do the real work... The irony is that your counter-description is spot on!
I must agree as well, if Steem ever spikes again, I'm gonna start pulling out as well. There are other social blockchains out there, other crypto social networks. Steem has run aground and I don't think it will be pulled back out to sea.
That's part of the liberal playbook, accuse others of the actions you are taking. I wouldn't wait for the spike, if a spike does come it might not even get you back to where you are today.
Thanks for the validation.
Of course it is, because how dare they have to be responsible for their actions... The witnesses are part of the reason why Steem is failing, along with issues like Steemit's premined tokens. I am truly thinking Steemit is doing a longhaul exit scam. Selling 800k Steem a month certainly makes it seem that way. I guess they don't understand how economics works, or else they would realize that doing that is part of what's driving down Steem prices.
Yeah, I just dumped all those Steem Engine Tokens, I also made sure all of my liquid steem is in SBD to keep it from losing any more value. Don't forget to dump your tokens too. Most are crap, but a few, like Leo and SteemSpeak, are worth more than their face value in Steem.
They're probably wanting to get everything they can out of Steemit before they announce it's failure to the public to completely drive the value to zero.
This wouldn't surprise me at all. I'd also suspect the witnesses are involved in it to, considering how easily HF21 passed muster without even an ounce of dissent.
Dissent makes you a bad socialist, no one wants to be a bad socialist comrade.
I'm glad you, at least, got to read this post. With no censorship on Steemit, I still expected it to get downvoted into oblivion before it could be read.
Oh yes, thoughts are dangerous after all, no one wants to actually think. So let others think for you, comrade!
Indeed, I saw it within 30 minutes of you posting it (and I have a system setup to upvote content by authors I like). I will say, the censorship-less network is nice... I do still think their is a place for social blockchain networks, but Steem just isn't it, not in its current form. Maybe someone can fork-off old Steem code and remake the network, as it should have been. Or maybe it's better to start from scratch and try again...
In any case, you on any other platform? Twitter, Telegram, Minds, Gab? I quite liked the content you made!
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what a great post man
sorry to see ya go but basically agree with everything you say here
i also dont think steem wont make it past its former highs the way things are going
have a hood night
cheers
Thank you. I can see you're being censored too. What a great environment this is!
ive basically been censored since i got hear
i seen someone bad mouthing a guy and girl here and i stuck up for two people with this real piece of work and i am sure you know him here
probably the same person i have a problem with
i refer to him as a jerkoff and basically do not even communicate with him even when he messages
its a constant series of spam and flags lol
when the witnesses stick up for this abuse and garbage this is what we get
the guy who replied a few times in this post to you knows what he is talking about when he speaks of the witnesses
have a great day and again sorry to see you leave
I'm not sure if you plan to stay, but if you do, good luck! Hopefully the witnesses will wise up one day.
interesant
im not going anywhere but im not here all the time either
met quite a few good people here and am not here for the profits thats for sure or i would have been gone long long ago
have a good afternoon mike