a bit after the fact by now, sorry but much truth in that , steemit has been walled off, for someone like me who practically lives in a borg cube i didnt even hear about it until it was nearly two years old, which is REALLY strange because i burned one or two GPU's mining BTC back when you could actually get a cent out of it lol.
But, since then, and by now, i'm almost convinced "they" (the protectorate or whatever one wants to call it) WANT it that way. The way i see it : inhere they're big fish, the biggest fish in the pond, but globably and universally this thing is but a little puddle and out there they would be the sardines, not the sharks (i think its an insult to real whales in most cases as those animals dont deserve to be a metafor for bloated moneypiles , not everyone included ofcourse)
As you say, the focus is on money, but i think its not simply that. Most here (specially those who were from the start) came in it with money and they have been, pardon my french 'circlejerking' for the spotlight. The emphasis on "how to do it" , "how to expand your network" "how to manage" and what not is totally averse to a blogspot , which is meant for expression. I'd almost call it narcissism in some cases, plus the company that's mistaken for the blockchain it runs on hasnt done very well in bettering that image. It's an elitist small pack and at this very moment the "bring a friend and some money to save the whale" makes it even sound more so (lets not mention ojou-sama versus the normies there) It's insulting at times, and not just insulting intelligence.
The biggest flaw was probably PAYING people to run nodes lol, it makes it all about money-politics : in the beginning it literally rained thousands of dollars a month on the top 20 (or was that 50 ?), something a few of them will be seriously hungover on by now i guess but
the blame put on the bots and the smallfry using them ... if you did the math and counted up all the small accounts and what they cost in a month compared to the top 20 and the company itself selling off its own coin to "pay the bills", without even looking for an alternative income for YEARS (as Churchill might have joked in privat maybe : it takes a world war to get the americans started ... not anti-american btw ... just a bit of the problem with the self-proclaimed 'leaders of the free world')
BTC has over 9000 nodes and nobody gets paid to run them while here the concept of de-centralized is a bit like the illusion of western particracy :
you get 20 people deciding, presided by the council and the emperor lol , thats hardly de-centralized, actually belgium has at least ten times that amount of politicians ... per region , maybe per province so that would make this place more de-centralized than this place in here which is beyond monty python-absurd.
I gotta admit, i had great hopes of making a euro here, it all looked GREAT (until steemcleaners attacked) that's another thing, the downvotes and the censoring but that got covered in your last post or post before that to which i already replied (i am actually trying to script something that would let one enter an accountname and a permlink(post link) and parse the replies automatically if they're put like you described) to get some kind of systemic consensus parser
its here atm (and its because you planted the idea, with no obligations or questions asked there, i just suddenly thought : "i can do that" ... so i try)
https://tyrnannoght.000webhostapp.com/tyrsubtabs/rpls.php
its not clear of, you can scroll to the bottom it almost parsed out the replies which the step after would make it possible to add them all up and print out a nice table , maybe even in post-ready format
not because or for you but THANKS for the idea, always nice to have something like that to do, if it ever gets presentable i'll put it up in public anyway. Just doing my thing there, i dont care much for "what opinion or post type or topic will get the most" and i certainly dont hang around witness accounts hoping for a whale commentvote lol. Also the fact that some people are downright frightened to put money on it because of the new downvote cartels forming and the justification from above ... im not convinced they grasp the reality of the masses they so desperately try to onboard BUT
I'm a little tired today. I need some distance to this whole issue, but I want to answer you in so far as you either introduce the three pillars of a democratically established system into such an environment as this and thus take over the legislature, executive and judiciary from the offline world and as a result of these efforts promise more than an insecure speculative scene based on crypto currency in the form of profits.
Basically, there is no mandate from an authority that people trust. Steemit Inc. does not look trustworthy to me. The work of the witnesses is not really well communicated in my view and these rather unclear relations between Steemit Inc., the witnesses and the users lead to confusion and dissatisfaction.
For me, the clear advantage of the systemic consensus lies in the non-public decision-making process, in which no one needs to make an exaggerated name for themselves and no further public arguments need to be put forward. From my experience with people, they are better at evaluating more than two and less than ten proposals in a secret and single session with themselves. If the proposals are mature enough and rich in variation, people often do the right thing. Only they say the wrong thing as soon as they are in the public spotlight. Hundreds could read along and tear their arguments to pieces.
I, for my part, notice how difficult I find this and how the discomfort sometimes sits on my neck.
You make me smile with your silly little animated pictures. :)