Creative experiments can never really be called failures - In failing they always produce something of value.
Introduction
(Quit this if you are in a hurry)
For as long as I have been on Steemit (which is very close to three years now) there has been an endless stream of both unfounded and well founded criticism of the network itself, mainly communicated via Steemit posts. Each such post has had rebukes both in the comment section and in other posts, and no matter how angry, destructive or bitter people have been these posts... these meta-posts have been a valuable part of the shaping of this place. Even in the euphoric times when the Steem was climbing voices have criticised what they saw as inequality, injustice or simply inefficiency.
In a couple of days there will be a new hardfork with new little adjustments that, as far as I can see, is making it harder for the small accounts. But all in all it is just in line with all the rest that has been happening on Steemit for years now, so I am mostly just going to ignore it, and will be trying to give my more general thoughts on the last three years here.
Steemit a failed experiment
(No worry I will not leave just yet)
For a long time the logo in the upper left corner said Steemit (beta) - now when the network has shrunk to only the fraction of what it was and all the top voters of the trending posts are called Upmewhale , Smartsteem and Therising the beta has been removed - we are now beyond beta - this is it!
So in that spirit I will list some of the things I found was working admirably in the Steemit technology and some of the things where it failed miserably.
Let's take the good things first:
Inflation
The problem for any kind of currency is distribution. Having a fixed amount will not only stall the spreading of the coins, but also keep the wealth in the hands of the same people. By printing new money, the original owners' share will devalue and the use of the currency will grow faster. It is also a way to diminish too rapid growth in value, and it means greater equality among the people using the currency - at least as long as the distribution system is efficient and fair.
So distribution is next.
Distribution via social media
Many Crypto currencies have had an interesting problem: How do we spread the first coins? I realised this when making some graphic for the Nano project. They used faucet to get the money in circulation. The Nano project is a fascinating idea, demonstrating techniques that could be a way to make cryptocurrencies fast, free and energy efficient. But the distribution is constipated - would you sell a coin that might be worth the amount 1000 times?
Steemit was cleverly connected to one of the things that right now represents a lot of value in the minds of people all over the globe: internet communication: consider the wealth of Facebook and Google. The fact that writing a blogpost actually takes some skill and working time and that both these thing traditionally represents value the social media as a faucet was a brilliant idea. People earned the money, and everybody could participate!
But as an extra asset: the social media did not only create a brilliant way to add value to and spread the currency, it created something much more valuable: a cultural community.
Cultural community
Currencies are traditionally centred around already existing powerful entities - empires, states, trading routes - and for a reason. Money is never something in itself, it grows out of necessity. So what happened when you make a currency out of the blue? Well, bitcoin showed us that the underground culture of hacker revolutinaries was able to rally their diminutive culture around this new kind of money. Steemit did even better. It took in the things that everybody could relate to: art, life experience, sports, begging... and investing.
The next step would be when we could actually trade some of this. Buy things from each other! That would be a great next step. Unfortunately it never really happened.
So now I have come to what I think was the problems with Steem and Steemit, and in my opinion it all comes from not understanding the worth of the cultural community.
Justice and power
Every time this discussion is up someone says: You are not entitled to get any money for your blogging. Facebook, Google, Twitter, Reedit cash in without giving you anything. Steem can pay something instead of nothing. This is of course completely true. Anyone who has made art knows that the stupid pop song will earn 1000 times as much as the avant garde jazz tune. But it is also true that people in general know a piece of shit from a piece of work (hehe). This is not black and white of course, but it is a gradient where 99.9% of people can see when we go into the black.
These days on Steemit the people who earn the largest share of Steem does not deserve them. Circumventing a system that promised that the community would reward your work and talent, with bidbots and selfvoting is also to devalue that system. The inflation system still works, but the distribution principles and the cultural community is lost. And when I say lost I mean lost, because contrary to popular libertarian belief, justice is as important as money in a human society. Steemit was always hindered by its image as a fraudulent ponzi scheme, but it was also an actual community that kept giving it real value and validity. As long as the corruption was at a manageable level this was working, but in the end people get tired of seeing injustice. A falling price on Steem is of course not helping, but the fact that I and many other still posts is a sign how strong the community actually was.
Police, curators and moderators
One of the things that amused me most back when Steemit was growing into a community was the emergence of statelike structures. As I am good at recognising drawing styles and was good at reverse image searches and looking for signatures, I participated in revealing plagiarists for what was later to be known as Steemcleaners. It was possible because some fine and honourable community members (with enough SP to actually make it possible) took it on themselves to create this vigilante police force. @pfunk for one. Curating guilds like @Curie is another example.
The strange thing is that they had to invent their own modus operandi. Reports was published as posts, coordination was happening on Steemit chat etc. This reveals something that Steemit lacked. Tools for community work and democratic tools for limiting abuse.
Democracy
The principles behind Steemit are simple, and I think that they for that reason have taught me a good deal about how human societies work. When violence is not a possibility, money is next in line as the primary power, and by applying almost no counter-measures to power abuse Steemit has ended as a place where it is hard to see any future for the community.
To be frank I was always here for the money. I am an artist and have been looking for a system where I could sell my works or get donations for my CC content. I am still looking, but I need to be able to trust the system. I know enough math to see where the money will be going in the future, and the exponential growth of SP in some accounts makes Steemit less interesting than fiat.
Much can be said against democracy, but it does give a certain security against power in the wrong hands and I would wish that a real democracy had been part of the technology. Voting for witnesses shows that voting can be done even if it in this version isn't really democracy.
Conclusion
As I wrote above I am not planning to leave Steemit, but I am pretty sure that Steemit will not be able to turn things around, and I actually think that it is because democracy and reputation never really were a priority. I know that none of this is a simple matter, and maybe the Creative coin or other of the new Steem Engine things will actually work? The tech is never the sole thing to blame. No matter, as I wrote in the beginning: Creative experiments can never really be called failures - In failing they always produce something of value.
That goes for the Steemit network too.
P.S.
I will keep posting here on Steemit because I really like the people I have meet here, and because I am making free art anyway. I will also try to get people to get people to participate in the Kickstarter I am making with the first album of Phill from GCHQ
I hope it can succeed in some form. Posts like this give me hope. There is a core community who care about the platform. The greedy ones with the highly rewarded posts may not make as much as you think when they have paid for the votes and that may be less viable after HF21. That may free up more rewards for people like you. I will keep pushing for good content to be rewarded even if it means I make less. Standing up to one bully today got me a flood of flags, but a good person cancelled those out.
Thanks for the comment! I wasn't sure anybody would open the ball :)
Maybe I am too negative, but I still think I get some important point that often get overlooked in the dominating economical and technical understanding of what is going on. To be fair it is not only Steemit that has a hard time including the softpower of culture, communication and cake.
I am not concerned about the posters in trending. They have to constantly power down to pay for the upvotes. The real problem is that Smartsteem and the rest is sitting on the system as giant parias that makes the percentage banks and paypal and all the likes charge seem small and feeble. To me that is corruption and I have a hard time supporting corruption (bet hey, I am not a libertarian :) I read the post you linked to, and it might be a good thing if these large profiles and their business destroyed each other. But vote buying is devastating for the platform no matter how legit they think the concept is.
I will stay here mainly because of people like you - the community in other words. There really are so many interesting people here, I will also still be voting for quality and for good comments of course. But I have become weary of Steemit as an institution if not the wonderful community. And it has nothing to do with how much I earn - it is exactly what I tried to express in the post ethical, democratic and egalitarian reasons.
For some people it is just a business and they will make money any way they can. We care more about the community and rewarding worthy content. Even if you just vote now you will earn well, but I hope you continue to post too.
I would like to try and build up some sort of campaign to vote up quality content to get it seen more. I am not sure we can compete with vote sellers, but it is worth trying. Not sure how it can work yet.
I will keep posting, and if you find a way we can promote good content you can count on me putting both some time and Steem into it.
I am glad that you have taken the time to write this and almost the entire piece echo my current sentiment <3
The platform could have been so much more, but at this stage, there are bad-faith actors and also powerful stakeholders who are probably not interested in making the cultural / community / talent pool angle work.
Regardless, I've run into some valuable friends and I'm still posting, I guess :3
I will keep using and posting on Steemit out of curiosity and appreciation for you guys :)
Who cares about Stinc anymore? ;)
I only care about Steem and we finally need to arrive in the decentralized world! Why the fuck are we waiting for a centralized entity to do what we'd like to see? The fuck. People still didnt get what decentralization is.
It's not just only a few more servers.. ;)
The problem is the distribution of the inflation isn't it? Steemit is still where newly created Steem is being handed out, or am I missing something?
Yea. That's cuz the ninja mine/ stake..
And yea the discussion about forking it out was here already.
That's why Stinc put all their steem on exchanges. To protect it..
And there werent enough people for a community fork.
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@l0ki set out to undertake a fork long before @thealliance was ever conceived of.
For whatever reason, he dropped off the Earth, and the attempt was never completed.
It's not a new idea. That indicates it's a good idea, because it keeps coming up, newly conceived.
Let's just fork this sh*t and build our own ;-)
Meanwhile, I suggest trying out Creary, which is basically also a Steem-fork, but especially for (visual) artists. They definitely need improvements in community features, though.
FORKKKKK
I considered using Creativecoin as I bought some of them before I dropped into this depressed hole :)
Yay, we’d definitely need a few techies joining us. Will look into this creative-coin thingy. Maybe when all the creative people leave Steemit all at once, the whales will realize, that there is not much left. “Creatives on strike!” ;-)
Not a bad idea actually. If people rallied to that it could be an interesting kind of activist experiment. Maybe we all could post the same boring text message and then only vote for other who were part of the strike?
Except the many Steemit internal problems you mention (and some more may be), it's a general flaw of all cryptos - they are supposed to have a value in the real world, in US dollar or any other currency that is being used.
That however cannot work if everybody and his dog can create a new crypto currency. This will - and already has -lead into a hyperinflation of crypto currencies.
"Value" cannot simply be created, there needs to be some substance behind it, like a material or a work effort. As long as cryptos are drawing their value only from finding the next greater fool to buy it, we will see may of them disappear.
My thought was that the cultural community could create the necessary consensus. But all the so called business that just adds another layer of abuse is making it hard to create the sense of justice that is necessary.
Well, may be community related trends, as well as technical developements, have some influence on the Steem price. The faith of the community into the future of the Steem blockchain and the Steemit platform play into that. However, the "value finding" happens at the exchanges, based on the actual trading of Steem. Its like the trading with stocks - sometimes a stock is rising even if the company is crap, or vice versa. Its a lot of speculation behind it all. And the good old "I'll be rich one day!"
That is obviously right, but the long time hope is that real value could be established. Depending on investors have been one of the main reasons cryptomoney has flourished, but also one of its greatest weaknesses.
Its not a failed experiment. Failed to you morons who don't know what the purpose was of the experiment. But it was a success you fucktard.
Finally someone who believes and then you are flagged - sorry about that, mate! Seems my upvote didn't change the downvote ghosting you. I'm pretty interested in hearing the true purpose of the experiment!
Edit: just saw that you downvoted me 100% with 1% voting power. First of all that ain't going to hurt anybody, and second why do it? I always preferred discussions to flagging. You should too.
Bernie broke her
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Yea, I saw that it was a Death-by-cop suicide in @steevc's post. Didn't even know it was a her, but the Kawaiicrush name actually sounds quite feminine.
I dont know if she really is a she either.. Just assumed cuz of the sound :p
She sold/transferred her account. @kawaiicrush is not the original account holder.
Certainly passionate about justice. Admirable in many ways, but not prone to excessive reason. No one's perfect though.
ah okay - explains a lot
yea she was interesting/ sad she's gone and in fury