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RE: Jeff Bezos chooses medium for publishing blackmailing emails

in #medium6 years ago

I found it very interesting that the richest man on earth, who owns a newspaper, has choosen medium for posting details an attampt to blackmail him with nude photos.

More accurately, an attempt to blackmail him by revealing his rather clumsy affair in general, supported by his rather unflattering dick pics. The real threat is to impugn his business sense by pointing out bad decision-making in his personal life – which is not entirely unreasonable as a plausible attack.

medium.com is some kind of centralized and non blockchain version of steem in my eyes.

However, in the eyes of most people, the reasonable people that Bezos is trying to communicate to, Medium is a blogging platform frequented by activists and journalists with some degree of cachet (deserved or not) with a focus on longform content, a mobile-friendly interface, and a reputation for serious business. It leverages content management and blogging technology that have been a part of relatively common life elsewhere on the Internet for almost 30 years now.

So, let's be entirely clear: Steemit is some kind of largely centralized, blockchain-hype wannabe blog platform in the eyes of the rest of the world.

You're never going to get traction if you don't understand where you stand.

The medium.com post itself has a no reach on google. When I search for the import key words:

https://www.google.com/search?q=jeff+bezos+Pecker

I find only news about this post but no direct link to the medium post on 16 pages of search results. This means he chooses medium.com as it has a suffient amount of readers that would discover his post fast enough and would pass the information in the post to the newspapers.

I'm not sure what your universe you're blogging from, but the one I am in has the original Medium post as the second hit and an absolute ton of news articles which make direct reference and link to the original Medium post filling out the rest of the page. If you actually tell Google what you want to search for.

20190208 18.37.43 www.google.com af8bfff1e893.jpg

If you tell it that you're just interested in Jeff Bezos's pecker (which may not be a problematic phrase in Germany, but in English means something entirely different and it is not surprising there might be some filtering on)…

20190208 18.46.49 www.google.com cfd346f9c5fd.jpg

Multiple top stories from multiple journalistic outlets, multiple references to Twitter links (and most importantly Bezos' personal Twitter which was the primary channel by which journalists became aware of the longform piece that he himself wrote), and nothing else.

Again, I don't know what universe you're living in where you don't get a direct link to the Medium post on 16 pages of search results, but if you're looking for a top-level link to a phrase which has unfortunate implications in English, you've already started by making a spurious request.

Bezos chose Medium because it is a well-known blogging site which focuses on clear and attractive presentation of longform content and has attracted a cadre of politically aware and active writers, so that he can assume an extra veneer of validity by appearing in their number.

Which you would know if you knew anything about blogging or the last couple of decades of journalism – or the dynamics of social media platforms.

He chose Medium because he thereby looks serious, it supports longform content, and he's not embarrassed to be seen in the company of the other things which are likely to be at the top of the site index.

Let's compare to Steem:

20190208 18.56.27 steemit.com 90b0969d97d1.jpg

Yeah, I can't imagine why a man who wanted to be taken seriously on both political and social matters, and runs a couple of the biggest businesses in the world wouldn't want to be seen hobnobbing with that caliber of article.

Could his post hit trending on steemit.com without paying for bidbots? Or would it be possible that nobody noticed it, as he is a new user without followers. What has to change that someone as Jeff Bezos could just write such an impactful post and it will hit trending? Would he found a fast way to register his username without searching and comparing all the different possiblities to create a new account?

It's Jeff Bezos. If he had written his article on Steemit and link to it from his Twitter account, there would've been more traffic dropped on the site in 15 minutes than it's seen in the last year cumulatively. If only half of a percent of those people decided to wrestle with the nightmare that is sign up, numbers would be off the chart. He wouldn't have to pay for bid bots, it doesn't matter if he never made a post before, it would be the most important post on the site for the entirety of its tiny history.

But why would he? There's no reputational credit to be had by posting on Steemit. There's no hobnobbing with serious journalists on Steemit. It's no way to be taken seriously.

Honestly, a post to Reddit would have more reputational currency that opposed to Steemit, and that's saying something.

Look, let's be honest with each other – the steem blockchain and, in particular, the manifestations of the blogging interface which uses the steem blockchain on the backend as a database server is in no way, no shape, nothing like a serious social networking site. It's not ready for prime time. It's not even vaguely supporting a lot of the social networking platform elements that we've come to expect of 20 year old content management systems. In the developers can't or won't recognize that fact.

Fine. That's the way it is.

If we want the steem blockchain as a backend solution and Steemit or a derivative to be taken seriously as a blogging platform, we need people interested in guiding development who are aware of the last 30 years of what's happened in the online experience, understand what blogging, microblogging, and social media interaction means and does (and how all of those three things are different), recognize that reputation comes purely from the writers secured on the platform as a whole. 99% of the content can't be about bullshit cryptocurrency. Not if you want to be taken seriously. Not if you want the liminal space to be taken seriously.

Until the interfaces for Steemit are at least as flexible and effective as five year old Reddit, until some people worth listening to actually come to the platform and write about meaningful things, until the platform is worth reading – people won't. Until the platform is worth writing on – people won't.

It's that simple.

If the important thing in your mind is to call out the ability to separate your presented name and your account name, you're not serious. I can't take your commentary on what should be done seriously. I just can't.

At this point, Steemit Inc. has probably blown their chance at having an established, effective portion of the blogosphere. When the best-selling point you've had for two years and continue to have is, "you might make some money from writing – maybe, possibly, if you chase whales, or you write about cryptocurrency in unflaggingly positive ways, and if someone who hasn't been here a lot longer or spent real money for the privilege doesn't decide that you don't deserve to be heard by other people," you're just never going to be finding that traction you need. And that's where we're at.

It's a shame, too, because the platform has had every advantage. It was a first mover, they had a year of no competition to speak of, they had really excited people interested in being involved in a new social media platform, and it has largely been thrown away.

What the platform needs is not Jeff Bezos talking about being extorted over his dick pics. What it needs is basic social media platform functionality.

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Verbose and well thought out replies like this give me hope that this can become a great platform.

Given my terrifying reputation for being able to carry on at length given any opportunity, and then making opportunities with rock chisels and explosives, I'm not sure suggesting I represent the "hope that this can become a great platform" is either desirable or sane.

It's flattering, for which I thank you, but even itself this comment violates one of the central precepts which I suggest we should stay far away from when it comes to developing a social media platform – making the majority of content about itself. Steemit has a problem with the hairy palms set, and that's a problem which extends well beyond the technical limitations inherent.

And I just wrote about it again.

You see the problem.

An unhealthy excess of spare time?

And the ability to write clearly very quickly.

There is no cure. I checked.