A few questions please, as I am new to Steemit. I have seen a lot of hate towards whales in my few days here, and am not sure if it is motivated by jealousy or a disdain for the idea of no real overseer to enforce regulations.
I am curious in what way(s) you believe this system would reward someone who has put in the effort and money a whale has put in here that differs. Seems like any type of reward for effort would be hated by those who want rewards for low effort.
Is it your belief that someone who has invested little like myself should have the same power as someone who has invested heavily as the whales have done? If so, please explain why.
I think with Steems current platform it will take a lot of work or money to ever become a whale here. I saw a funny GIF the other day and it was basically - Insert more steem to continue... So true.
I believe you are correct. I am under the assumption the quickest route is to put your belief in the system in monetarily, placing a financial stake into the platform. It feels to me that it is an incentive reward for staking a claim into a long term position. On the surface I cannot fault the logic with that as someone who invests their money into the platform deserves a greater share of the reward than someone like myself who has yet to put any financial skin in the game.
Like your comments, I am a new comer to Steemit and learning my way around. Have the same experiences as you do. Its the whales who really decide what gets noticed, also without the bots it is practically impossible to push your content and monetize it.
Coming to the fundamentals of blockchain that seems to be the violation of what blockchain talks about. Hope we do not got to the old saying Money is king, then there will be no difference between centralized social media versus steemit.
So far it has been an interesting learning curve however.
True..
Yes I think you're pretty right there. The quickest route to being a whale or making significant money is to put steem in. That is what @jerrybanfield did. Dan and the other creators put in sweat equity and let's face it, this is pretty amazing what they've done. Even if not perfect.
But I think the better thing to do is look at it from a different perspective. Sure if you want this to be your job then work hard and you'll earn. But otherwise we can also simple get on here and enjoy ourselves and over time we'll see a little reward.
I would like it to have a little of both. I wish they could add a feature to turn off voting power in regards to it's function, or maybe create a secondary upvote system. Like many I will not allow myself to fall below 80% and this keeps me from commenting on many posts I like because I can't upvote them. If a post is one worth commenting on for the most part, it would deserve an upvote.
Yes it's a difficult balance to find.
You do get rewarded in other ways for commenting with more reputation and that I believe impacts who can downvote you. Ultimately though I think the answer is to treat the vote and reward like a bonus and simply make comments as and where one sees fit.
@practicalthought , I get what you're saying. The platform will need to evolve as time passes. I've always come in midway through new projects and beta testing. The middle is a difficult place, you're visible, have a whale or 2 as a friend, and they get pulled into a new, confidential project. So the whales leave the platform, which dissolves into nothingness, and at the end, you've gotta rush and download all your content; or if you're like me, I save myself the headache because I know I can easily reproduce that content again (and make it fit for a newer platform).
I was on Twitter a few months of its release, the same for YouTube and loads of other, now, dinosaur platforms.
Currently, I'm beta testing near 10 platforms. If you Google MissNikkiAnn, it will speak for itself. Being the first to brand my name is what keeps my $500 a year coming in. Yes, $500 a YEAR. That's it.
I know I'm rambling, but typing this is opening my eyes a bit.
And maybe someone else will find my words helpful, the same way I felt reading this post and seeing @practicalthought's comments.
Agreed and the devs probably must compromise to compete; however check these Total Visit numbers:
from similar web on 2.11.18
Great question. I don't see hate toward whales necessarily but they are a point of contention. When one is supporting you it's great. But there's the odd one who out of spite will flag you and drop your reward to zero hiding your post.
It's a complex game and it's interesting how it changes people when they get some of the reward. People spend hours on and post daily on Facebook and the reward for that effort goes to the shareholders. But for doing the same thing here they get upset when they're not rewarded in large amounts. The reality is that on FB most of us are really only worth a few cents a week to the shareholders. I've never clicked on a DB ad. Though I do have communities there for my meditation practice etc so I give value to the shareholders there.
The steem system also rewards bot usage. It's complicated. I think that this has to go through many iterations. Also I think expectations have to be better set. Advertising that "I made $x on steem" just leads people to sign up thinking they're going to make big bucks. And most are not going to. However, with the reward system in place it's hard to then get people just focusing on creating good content.
Another thing about Fb is it's more circled around friends whereas this is all public. That makes a big difference.
@petervroom, what you are saying is drenched in truth. I'm so used to this beta testing with chocolate candy coins wrapped in glistening gold foil.
I have specific goals for every platform I join, it keeps me sober and grounded.
Thank you to all who are commenting, 30 heads are better than my one. I've learned a lot in this thread.
Socialism!
Thank you for replying. I will have to consider what you have said and figure out a context for it in my current limited understanding of the platform before I can comment further with any intelligence.
so all the power is in the hands of 1% ?
Another thing to consider is that most people on this site will only vote for the stuff they like, but without the vast diversity of content seen on sites like Youtube, some people just don't vote on things at all. I could just upvote random videos on D-Tube just for the STEEM, but I didn't come here for the money. I also haven't seen anything on either Steemit or D-Tube that I feel deserves my vote yet. Without people making new kinds of videos or posts to reach a wider audience, the system's resources become concentrated in the hands of the people that found content they like or bots they like.