This isn't meant to be a novel. Just a reminder that no matter how stubborn or wealthy @justinsunsteemit might be, Steemians have been through a 2+ year bear market and they didn't quit.
They've been fed up with shit tons of lies from @ned, yet they keep fighting to keep this place decentralized, the very moment that even Steem's founder himself didn't want it decentralized. Who would have thought eh?
I don't know about you, but I don't want a HF. Seriously. I just want our "home" safe.
It's a shame really that the Korean community, who happen to have the decisive vote via the @proxy.token account don't feel the same way and prefer to maintain a balance so that neither Justin nor the elected from the community witnesses can HF the chain.
Isn't it obvious that Justin just doesn't give a shit about us? Regardless if you are a Korean or Japanese or an Italian or Nigerian?
He just doesn't care.
Ninja-mined stake aside, Steemit.Inc is his latest acquisition, right? I don't know about you, but whenever I buy something new I can't stop talking about it. There's not even a single tweet where he mentions STEEM, despite the governance issues. Have you seen any act from his side as a sign of goodwill to resolve this mess with minimum collateral damages? NO.
He doesn't even bother to update the damn feed price. How hard is it ffs?
I've watched the discussion uploaded by @ausbitbank and the least I can say is that I am disappointed...
He kept talking about shorter powerdown windows and what's good for the exchanges. Is this what a serious investor, one that would help Steem thrive would do?
I guess everything's fine and our only issues are a shorter powerdown period and what exchanges feel more comfortable with eh? Sheeesh...
3 new free listings popped up for STEEM last week. Those might be small exchanges with low volume and such, yet it's an indicator that Justin's "problems" aren't even an issue for the exchanges.
Unless of course we are only talking about his exchange, Poloniex, and what's best for him. Have you seen any demands from Bittrex maybe? Nope. What about Huobi? Nope.
Fuck the exchanges.
First and foremost he should care for what's best for this place. And he simply doesn't.
He doesn't even take the time to read and respond to some of the hundreds of comments under his post.
Nah...I don't believe a single word coming out of this guy's mouth. And Koreans shouldn't believe him either...
It's not Koreans vs the rest of us...It should be us, united, vs a guy who's trying to tear us apart.
This is how rankings look like right now. And I am telling you, if @good-karma just crossed the 20K unique votes mark and at the same time the 2nd witness with more unique votes has 5000 unique votes less, then there's something we are doing wrong...and I have a feeling that we can still take back our home...
I am not telling you what you should or shouldn't do...I am simply presenting the facts...
Have a good one everyone and don't give up on Steem.
Notice that he's not even active for 5 days ! Imagine that !
For sure he doesn't care at all about us all.
He has shown zero respect towards us and has convinced us his only goal is to destroy us. But we're here to stay, he can go though! ASAP!
Well, one of those cases where a screenshot is worth 1000 words...
Yeah, today is 6 days and the thing that he's not even following anybody !
Imo the people dissatisfied with hf 22 and the freedown vote pool know their days are numbered, especially with talk of using smt to reward, rather than steem (something we should do straight away if forking).
I think the timing is right now. No SMT that sells votes will be worth a penny since it is only a one way street without a reward pool to exploit.
This isn't antibusiness at all. It is antiabuse. There are hundreds of chains that support business amd they can sell SMT like mobile games amd reward soft currency, buy proper ads on frontends or pay people (>like you and me<) to write ad posts. They are just here for the community, they want to exploit, not to play fairly.
If I'm wrong people will agree to wait 6 months until after SMT is released before wanting to reevaluate EIP model. They are just trying to 'double-team' the community with justin and don't care if he screws them for dessert.
Who is developing SMTs these days? Didn't the developers working on them quit?
The code was mostly if not entirely done (other than final testing) and a non-Steemit dev, @howo is paid by SPS to do the final testing. It will take some time, and current events were certainly not on anyone's roadmap, but it can probably still get deployed once some remaining issues get resolved.
Some of the early work on SMTs was done by my team, and they know the code concepts well (they even have some ideas for optimizations they want to do).
So SMT's are still a thing? Judging by the complete lack of communication with Steemit team (wonder if there's anyone left there) and the recent chaos regarding governance, I have a feeling that they are far from being released.
I think now we, the community needs to take up the development via SPS mechanism. This is the reason why witnesses have been demanding to have funds allotted to SPS to fund development. Anyways, unless we take back the consensus, none of that it going to happen any time soon.
There's a lot of interest in SMTs, so I think SMTs are definitely "still a thing". My devs worked on SMT code early on, and had ideas for how to make them more efficient. It's not a huge part of my personal vision for Steem, but one of the things I see changing in this blockchain is that the future development won't be controlled by a few people.
Interesting question. It's probably on pause, but it was close to being released and those developers still like the community.
A fork is inevitable, every day that passes the suckpuppets earn +4k steem. Plus all the people that are supporting them (korean or not) are just in the way and I don't think that they will change their stance.
We should just fork-out everyone that is voting for Justin Sun and if they want to join the new chain they can buy in. We can just dump the old steem and use it to prop-up the value of the new coin.
The real battle would be to get the fork listed on exchanges.
It's pretty difficult to get listed on the big exchanges these days.
My gut tells me that if Mr. Sun can gain control again to release a hard HF that it will be a disaster and it will take the pre-TRON witnesses to fix things. That is the time to get the new hard HF installed on the exchanges. In the HF the best analog fix will be to @null|Mr. Sun so that any future hostile agents will think twice before fucking with the community.
In my way of thinking HF22.2 already broke the trust of the chain so discussions about ownership and property are in degrees starting at this point. Besides both sides have demonstrated that on the blockchain possession is ten tenths of the law.
@steem.dao rather than @null. These funds were not meant to be burnt but used for development and onboarding.
In any case we need to get rid of him
Your point is well taken. Yet be it Mr. Sun or someone else it seems a weakness to DPoS which requires further development.
We can only be grateful to @ned's incompetence to have lowered the pre-mined stake down to its present 21-ish% from over 50% in the early years. 😎
It is absolutely true that time was on the side of decentralization. The community wouldn't be exerting this much influence without the inflation doing its job all these years.
Exactly.
Agreed.
4K STEEM is nothing compared to what all community members earn each day collectively. A reason to post more and give curators reasons to spend some VP.
Just trying to find ways to not fork the chain here...
If however a HF takes place, I hope the DPOS protocol turns into what I would call a REDPOS protocol to avoid future "suckpuppet witness" takeovers.
REDPOS sounds like a great idea to add to the majority stake holder take over fix(es)!
Thank you @novacadian!
If we get there, I think that it would be a nice addition. Learning from our mistakes and eliminating takeover scenarios should be a top priority...
You're certainly right about a lot of us having been through a lot of turbulence with this gig... and I'd like to think there are enough of us here who have invested enough faith and sweat equity in making this community something worthwhile that we can also do what needs to be done to ensure it has a decentralized future.
If there was one thing that always made me a bit nervous about Steem "way back when," it was that Dan often described it as an experiment. There's something about the word "experiment" that suggests something that can be discarded; something that is the "prelude" to something, but not the actual "thing."
I think we've proven ourselves worthy of being much more than just an experiment. Those of us who kept going when things crashed. Those of us who kept creating when Steem fell to 7 cents. Those of us who didn't rage quit every time the upper echelons instituted a change that messed everything up.
This is a community of communities. Like a city has neighborhoods. The Korean community is still part of the city... and if the city crumbles, ALL the "neighborhoods" lose.
That. Pretty much summarizes the current situation. I just hope that they'll understand it asap.
If we allow this thing to blow up in our faces just because of some downvotes...ok...nuff said..
I like our Korean Community too, but just downvoted for disagreement for rewards.
Meh, no worries mate. I wish Koreans could understand that with their help we can save Steem, and I wouldn’t mind if they flagged this post or any post to zero.
Thank you @mindtrap for influencing me on reaching out more of the community. I have embedded a post of my own with some "attitude" and personality of the message I also would like to pass.
But mostly, the idea was also to capture first the ones that don't care about, and make them understand (in case they like my personal story about BEER) that users on the STEEM community have really great value and fight back for what they like most.
There is no reason why not everyone at this stage have not more voting VESTs as the fake witnesses. You either are with the community, or you should just leave.
Introspection... I know how it would be possible to kill some of these attacks in the future:
I believe these measures will drastically change the education of the community. Initially it will some great impact on new users, but ultimately it will cleanse the blockchain from impostors and scammers.
Hmm, I guess that would trigger everyone to cast their votes regardless if they only care about blogging. Interesting.
Kinda brutal. I mean real life happens too and a two or three days break from the platform for some people isn't unusual. But overall I think those measures could be discussed. You should drop your ideas during the next Town Hall which is...today.
Thanks a lot... I would attend, but I am on UTC+13 and it kind of would be hard for me.
Although the ideas are there... I agree they are a bit brutal... but necessary for a "temporary" effort... which afterwards, could be relaxed uppon agreement.
I've watched the discussion too uploaded by @ausbitbank I am disappointed too...
Steem is a good project with a lot of potential to grow but without many exchanges to support it, like many other projects, it is broken by the bear market, apart from many witnesses who are never in agreement, neither for the good nor bad changes, I hope this will be resolved soon to be able to be united if this ship stops going aimlessly.
Why would they not support Steem?
STEEM is being listed on the biggest exchanges.
Binance Huobi and Bittrex are big players in the crypto space. The fact that they abused their power and helped Justin is a whole different discussion...
Bittrex didn't.
I was actually referring to big exchanges that we are listed on. Of course Bittrex didn't. And none of the above demanded shorter powerdowns and downvote removal.
It's just Justin trying to "charm" the Korean community.
If he succeeds in charming them, forking their stake out should be seriously considered.
Can we just take the (most decentralized) road that will get us back to $1.00 steem. I new new carpets before my baby is born in may.
Sheesh. It's been a long 7 months of blogging away waiting for things to get better.
May have to get a "real" job again.
Wah. Wah. Personal pity drama!
Posted via Steemleo
lol youre funny
Posted using Partiko iOS
He proved many times he doesn't give a shit about our community. All he wants and cares about is our governance in his hands, no matter what. Unfortunately to him Steem is just a small competitor to his main interest that is Tron.
Whatever I'm down for the new leader @justinsunsteemit, been following STEEMIT and the old witnesses all this time and they haven't gotten us anywhere! Now they trying to divide us even more with this fork instead of just leaving. Whatever we have been doing here the past 3 years has to change, It's time to start over, I'm staying, CYA!
Yeah... I think this all means that we should target users that use the @esteemapp. I will try to write up a post and promote there today or tomorrow. Been distracted with this market's thing, and the whole methodology around it from COVID-19.
Posted via Steemleo
Good idea.
There...for the Twitterland
you Have done good work fighting the coup
and we will continue
Never give UP!
The Koreans don't feel the same way because they have been bullied and ganged up on for the last year by many of the previous top witnesses and their friends. I can't blame them for wanting something different than the status quo.
No they have not been bullied. They spammed and abused the reward pool which is why they got downvoted.
Whether being bullied or not is often in the eye of the beholder and they have stated numerous times that has how they have "felt". It's also certainly looked that way from the outside as well, which is why I said I don't blame them for feeling that way.
Bullied? Downvoting one's post for solid reasons isn't a form of bulling.
The same "solid reasons" could be applied to literally hundreds of posts on here yet it was only enforced on those select few. Which is why they have "felt" bullied.
I love Steem as you do even if at the moment the situation is becoming boring.
i just took a little time off and this is what i am coming back to? :P
Well...yeah...
Far from boring tho, you have to admit.
hahaha you got that right :P
yeah we stay storng together :) #strrong
As with most things involving humans, Steem is not a single community but a collections of tribes made up of people who have different interests and desires even within each tribe. While you may get a majority to "rally round the flag" temporarily, in short order people will return to pursuing their own self-interest. Such is the norm for the human experience and not necessarily a bad thing.
Some people prefer safety and that is why they favor Sun. But freedom is better than alleged security and protection promised from centralized authority, government.
There is no security under Sun.
Exactly.
you are definitely right. justin sun just want his stake that's it. he can't love steem because he only love his shitcoin TRX. peoples like justin sun just want to earn money they do not care decentralization or community, they want just money that's it. after steemit he will buy one more new project and merge it in tron and forget steemit.
Anyway very good post, shared on twitter
►
I just saw this on Twitter and I agree 100%! Justin Sun isn’t looking to make anything better for anyone but himself. A few of us have started talking about organizing on discord to campaign against Justin and for STEEM. I’m following you on twitter and STEEM. Come join the conversation. 😁
Congratulations @mindtrap! You received a personal award!
You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:
Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!
But it is Koreans vs rest of us. Just because we might not want it to be that way doesnt mean that it is not that way.
Koreans dont care about Steem, they care about money and raping the pool.
Ouch.
In the event that anyway a HF happens, I trust the DPOS convention transforms into what I would call a REDPOS convention to keep away from future "suckpuppet witness" takeovers. textsheet
Good idea.
my steem is trapped in binance i want to cry....
Don't forget that your biggest competition is the person in the mirror.
!giphy don't kill my vibe
Posted using Partiko Android
giphy is supported by witness untersatz!
I'm afraid hard fork is inevitable, regardless od what we really want. I simply cant find a single reason to trust Justing, not to even mention something like colaboration. He proved to be piece or shit i don't think anyone can convince me otherwise.
He has zero understanding on how steem works, not in technical nor economy wise terms.
Koreans are mostly angey on downvoting thing as it disables them to act maliciously and keep on extracting the value.
Fuck this shit
This is so terrible. We need to get on our feed and work together as a big Community of Steem. Don't let us divide on what it takes tens of weeks to build
Posted using Partiko Android
The normal witnesses and the Sun witnesses had all updated the feed prices to about 14 US cents a Steem roughly as of last night March 12th, 2020. Yet this morning, the API calls return a price of 19.4 US cents. Right now they have a price feed of about 12.8 cents US / Steem. So, they are updating the price feeds. How long does it take for the prices set by witnesses to take effect?
At the top of this site the Steemfiles.com : www.steemfiles.com shows the steem price feed price as the "convert rate." It should be close or equal the price of Steem per dollar but it is really high.
Congratulations @mindtrap!
Your post was mentioned in the Steem Hit Parade in the following categories:
When Steem was quite new, flagging was discouraged except for "abuse." But I have been here a long time, and I have been flagged not by witnesses but by other users without an explanation.
I am not crying here, really. It's just that I bet this is not just my experience and for some it probably is much worse for them. If Justin Sun is arguing that he is going to get rid of downvoting, he is going to get support that way.
Look at this post of mine:
Global Temperatures
Two down-votes: no explanation
One in Spanish, about Bitcoin in ARS. In retrospect, I hope no Argentinian bought BTC
Two down-votes: no explanation.
Not that I tend to get down-votes a lot, some subject matters bring this but the point is, I can empathize with the frustration for someone who is getting a lot of down-votes on his or her account on every other post.
You need to address why downvoting is good. Whaleshares is the best example why downvoting is good but its not enough to argue.
In UIs, instead of just a (V) to down-vote, have several down-vote buttons with each an explanation: A button that says "flagged because the content is pornographic", one that says "flagged because the content is hatespeech", another one that says "flagged because the content is a personal attack" (and is not about Justin Sun), yet another that "flagged because its fakenews", pen-ultimately one that says "flagged because its getting too much money", and finally one that says "other reason". At least a little transparency into the thinking of the flagger might be helpful. It might cause some introspection on part of the flagger as well. This can all be done without changing the consensus of the chain.
Really gutted about it. As usual, the ones claiming to be the saviour are nothing but charlatans and thieves. Decentralised internet? The only thing Justin aims to do is centralise and monetise. Unfortunately sociopaths have no clue about the benefits of a true community. Really sad. Glad Steem saw him for what he is. Nothing but a crook. Gave the guy every chance to prove himself but he has let down at every opportunity.
If your presenting facts then why keep pretending Justin just came in and did all of this as planned? He has a big stake in Steem and it was almost frozen... Nobody is winning right now and we're all too busy demanding apologies and leaving out facts to fix this.
@mindtrap... Unfortunately, not everyone is understanding the reason for this war.
Well here are some more facts...
A lot of people disliked the free downvote mana bar, but they weren't powerful enough to stop it. A lot of people believe Steemcleaners is corrupt, hypocritical, tyrannical and the opposite of decentralized. A lot of people found the #NewSteem movement to be aggressive and ugly. A lot of people left due to #NewSteem or are here but only half here, emotionally.
The Korean community is a large part of that group of people, but not alone in that sentiment.
Many people, I included, feel that Steem has been dominated by a small crowd of anti-business tyrants that ruin the whole blockchain and screw Steem's future.
How do they screw its future? Compare the rewards distribution of major stakeholders on Steem vs the Crypto Youtubers. The Crypto Youtubers are famous among the whole of the crypto industry with many followers on Youtube, Twitter and Facebook. But these people barely make anything and rarely touch trending on Steem.
Why is that? Because this place is nothing more than a big circle-jerk, wherein the key players keep milking the reward pool in hopes that it won't end soon. They know they are not rewarding top talent, which is bad for Steem in the long term, but they are really about the short term gains. Instead, they keep upvoting each other, people that are nobodies on Youtube or Twitter with subscribers only in the hundreds at best.
Justin is not probably good for Steem, but a lot of us are at least glad to see the old hierarchy getting broke up. And if he sells off his stake it will mean low prices for a while, but it could also mean much more decentralization.
Thanks for throwing us all under the bus with your disgusting attitude.
You're welcome! :)
OMG! You actually spoke to me? A nobody who doesn't vlog about crypto on Youtube? Are you feeling okay? I don't deserve this honor, your highness. Please waste no more time on me and carry on about your important and meaningful existence. Thank you.
You know how us elites do things... We always have to kiss a baby or two. You're a rather big baby, but let no one say I am not a man of the people.
Thank you for insulting me, your highness! Keep it coming! Show everyone your true colors, so I don't have to.
I don't judge people by their color, @nonameslefttouse. Shame on you...
Yep. I don't agree with all of this, but there is a lot of truth in there. Steem has mostly had the same groups of people calling the shots. They have gotten steem from a top 5 coin to a top 80 coin, not entirely by their own fault, but they have been a big part of it. For whatever reason steem has been very anti-business. When new people have shown up and not played exactly by the community rules, they have been run off, and people have high-fived about it. I think many here in the broader community would love to see things shaken up on here.
It's not anti-business. It is anti businesses which seek to generate revenue and profit by directing chain rewards to themselves. These are the exact same self-voting, vote selling, and vote trading (all equivalent) that isn't a sustainable use of the reward pool when individuals do it, and still isn't even if you slap the label "business" on top of it.
Businesses which generate revenue from paying customers like any legitimate business are more than welcome and always have been.
I agree with you, @hobo.media!
This stalemate, despite the votes to regain control of the TOP20 potentially exists, demonstrates the discontent of much of the community.
Would the circle-jerk be decreased as people join Steem to vote to balance or counter-balance and better compete with the whales, the dolphins, the sock puppet accounts, the duplicate accounts, bots, etc? I would say I hope so. And that is one of the problems, that Steem has only around a million people or a lot less active users each month as opposed to like billions like Facebook and YouTube got.
Definitely! If the supply of stake was more spread out then the winners and the losers in terms of content quality would become a true "wisdom of the crowd" experience. But right now, its a buddy system, which hurts the chain over all.
If the core members of Steem really wanted it to succeed they would be putting out an effort to drive youtubers/tweeters here. The only way to do that is curate their work, but we see that people like DataDash don't do well here. Tim Pool came here, but he stopped coming here because he wasn't rewarded enough or something. But Minds.com have attracted big names like Joe Rogan and Tim Pool, people with subscribers in the millions. We need those people if Steem is going to succeed.
That's because the reward pool just plain isn't nearly big enough to compete with revenue share that comes from selling advertisements, even if all of it went to successful youtubers. Trying to come up with ways to direct more rewards to that sort of thing is ultimately futile and prevents the reward pool from being useful for cases where it is practical, like encouraging new users who aren't famous and appreciate even modest rewards as being more than what they get on most free sites.
If you want to compete with youtube, you need a business model that attracts outside revenue, e.g. from advertising, which scales with viewership and then directs that revenue to creators. The Steem reward pool isn't that and can't be that.
YouTube is a video website on steroids. Do you recommend Steem find some Steroids to help pump up Steemit, I mean the blockchain in general? Too many millions of people got hooked on the Fast Food equivalent of social networking on the Internet. Google came out of DARPA. Many things in the world have been dominated not by free markets but by corporatism, monopolies, cartels, agencies, organizations, fascism, tyranny, etc.
If I am following the point you are making accurately, I think it is a mistake to believe Steem can succeed by trying to be quality content first. Quality content will come eventually if the world values Steem enough for it to survive to that point.
Steem is not really needed for solving content quality. Youtube and Twitter have "fast food" content and high quality content, Steem can never be just quality content because it is meant to be used by everyone. Steem does not solve any problems related to quality content, on the contrary, the most talented content producers are more interested in the audiences of Youtube, Twitter and Facebook than Steem.
So, what does Steem solve? Censorship resistant information sharing. I believe Steem is most successful as Twitter's counterpoint. Twitter is heavy on the censorship, which is good for those that want a "safe space" so to speak. But journalists, political commentators and provocateurs struggle on Twitter despite the fact that they love the platform for their work. Steem can solve their problems.
Also, as Smooth said, Steem currently does not have the capability to adequately reward long-form content. But content the length of a tweet? Sure, $5-$200 earnings for a simple but viral message within 150-250 characters sounds very fair, and $0.05-$0.50 on a good comment sounds cool.
Art:
Also, quality can be subjective as well like art. Agreed that Steem serves as a safe space like you said. So, I archive my work here as a way to keep backups online. That is a priceless feature. I would add a donate button on posts to allow people to send their favorite artists some tips, some money, and not just an upvote button.
Steem Upvote Add-ons
I would also encourage people to develop Steem apps and specifically add-ons which can offer different upvoting systems that do not depend completely on the Steem pool or even at all.
Decentralize Pool Systems
I would seek to decentralize pool systems as opposed to only being limited to the centralized upvote pool and also the downvote pool of the Steem blockchain. For example, Busy.org could have an independent pool system that could be added through a web browser add-on or some other method. That would add increase competition in the money systems or pool systems that could simply incentivize innovation in all of that. And it seeks to minimize cartels and especially monopolies which could plague pool systems.
You have some nice ideas.
You might not know this, but Steem doesn't actually protect your artwork. Images and Audio are not immutably recorded by the blockchain, they are stored on private servers. Only the text can actually be censorship resistant on Steem.
That said, your posts cannot be deleted by someone else, so even if the artwork is not actually stored on the blockchain, nobody can ever delete your posts that direct people to that artwork. :)
Fighting abuse is not anti business. Take a closer look and you'll see which side the legitimate businesses are on.
We disagree with each other. Plain and simple.
Most of them just share their YouTube links just to earn some extra crypto and pfff, they are out. They don't engage, they don't build, they don't even reply to those who take the time to watch their vlogs and drop comments and they definitely don't shill Steem...
Those are the Youtubers you are referring to?
If we were to behave like savvy business minds we might ask ourselves why they don't do those things we want them to do. If we're not getting the result we want it means our platform is flawed, not the users.
Steem does not attract content consumers and content producers through rewards and referral programs such as BAT, Minds, Publish0x and other platforms do. Instead, from the beginning Steem has always been about only attracting investors and not talent.
Rather than make Steem this exciting and fun place to hang out at and view or create content like the other social media platforms, Steem was all about shilling to stakers who then in turn reward starving-artist sycophants that will jump through hoops to get an upvote.
Stakers are important, very important. I get that. But there has always been an attitude that content producers are secondary, which is insane unless you're just looking for that swing trade. I find many people on Steem to be anti-business and unreasonable. Steem has to become the it place before it will succeed, and its the talent that makes it happen.
Don't get me wrong, there is some talent here. But if Steem's talent was compared to the competition in terms of a movie analogy, Steem is a B grade movie starring Alec Baldwin. On a rainy day you'll watch it but the general experience is meh.
A lot more people like it. Good riddance to those who don't start your own business with vote-buying enabled and see how far that gets you. Hint, you will certainly fail.
Steem is open for business as long as the business isn't exploiting the reward pool. If you want support from the community, come up with a good idea.
I've followed crypto-YouTubers on Steem. Most of them rarely engaged on Steem and just directed people to external channels. There are a few onboarding ideas to bring some of these people back, but it is either an advertisement or a 2-way street.
So you think bidbotting is going to solve this problem? The youtubers who get upvoted on Steem are focused on Steem.
A lot of the 'hierarchy' are individuals who are very good for Steem. Do you want to see them fall out of favour quickly? Well, a few just did by making really bad choices. It's not the first time it happened either. Why would we want to punish the people who have been around forever building their accounts and helping the community? Sure they have become powerful, but name me a few who didn't earn it.
Low prices are great for people who can afford to buy like me, and don't need the income. But there are a few very good and important people around here who rely on income and cannot afford to have whales intentionally manipulating or crashing the prices. I'm not talking about people who are just shitposting either, I'm talking about people developing stuff, running servers, etc, who depend on their income. If they have to leave, Steemit will be all there is left and well, they aren't doing so much these days.
Although technically correct, I don't think dumping on the market is a good way to encourage decentralization. I'd rather see it go to developers who slowly sell it while improving Steem because then we win in 2 ways. I can't believe how many people fail to see this. There is literally no advantage to us simply giving the coins to Justin. If we wanted his help, we could have made a 'pay Jusin' SPS. We would probably get their help for a lot less than 65 million Steem and none of the drama or force 'agreements'.
Are you aware that the best posts on Steem that grow organic traffic here have nothing to do with Steem? SEO is enhanced when obscure, infrequently addressed content is produced. The "I love Steem because ..." posts are actually sending the blockchain to its slow death.
I agree that interesting content that isn't for internal audiences can help promote Steem. However, we just don't have enough of that content being made and Steem needs to be distributed. Better 'I love Steem' getting the rewards than people buying and selling votes for their crypto scams or junk content.
I've seen some pretty weird stuff get a lot of rewards.
Still, bid bot services showed us the way to increasing STEEM's value and providing a strong use case: promotion.
The best way to do the content promotion use case is through burning STEEM via a promotion tool. Steampeak's tool seems to not work perfectly, but its a good start.
Paid promotions shouldn't be rewarded with votes, bottom line.
That's a philosophical argument. I prefer a promotion system that involves STEEM being burned. To me that is a solid use case for STEEM. That said, I thought of bid bot services as a perfectly fine thing.
Frankly, I never cared and don't care about paid votes. People acting as if their reward pool is being "abused" or "raped" is just dumb. Everyone staking is adding value to the blockchain and due to that they get votes as compensation for staking. What they do with those votes is none of anyone else's business.
This is what I mean by Steem having an anti-business atmosphere that will likely kill itself over time. The only thing that draws content producers here is $ signs, the only thing that draws investors here is staking ROI.
People blamed the bid bots for Steem's decline, but it was never the bots. That's why Steem is still doing shitty even after that industry is gone. In fact, Steem only became less popular after HF 22 and alienated many investors and separated the community. Post HF 22 was an ugly witch hunt of downvoters going around like a mob.