I've been reading some posts on this platform for roughly 1 week now and my opinion of it is that it's a good idea that is not working well. This is an opinion post. You can agree or disagree, I'm fine with either.
Easy money = easy spam
When you've money incentives to create content, you'll get crap content (low quality content) most of the time, also known as spam. Now, in a normal platform, spam would not get upvoted. Here, spam/shitty-content seems to be upvoted quite frequently. Why is that? I'm not entirely sure, but I believe people upvote things mostly for the images. If you've an image of a cozy place, with a cup of coffee and a cat, you'll get good money, regardless of the content.
There recently was a guy (https://steemit.com/@ruthofisrael) that posted the exact same post 4 times in a row. In the same day he posted 4 times the same post. Exactly the same. I think in 8 hours he had 1 post copied 4 times?
What would be the outcome if this were a "fair" (for the lack of a better word) system? In my opinion, 1 of the 4 posts would be upvoted and the other 3 would either be downvoted or simply not-upvoted. That's not what happened. All the 4 posts were upvoted and every single one is earning him 60+ usds. That's right, he's getting 60*4=240usd by posting the exact same post 4 times. Is this his fault? No, it's the community's fault.
Missuse of tags and stupid posts
Go to the science tag and read the entries there. Anti global-warmings posts, anti-vaccination posts. Really, what the fuck? These kind of posts should not exist, much less be tagged as science. Somehow, (really, how?) some of these posts are getting 100+usd!! That means people are agreeing with them. Am I the only one in this platform that's downvoting these guys?
How the hell does an anti-vaccination post gets 100+ usd? Does steemit cater to the dumber part of society?
Having said that, I know that not everone is a low-content creator and/or an insane dumb conspiracy person. For those that are not, please tell me your opinion on all this. I really am interested in reading your thoughts.
Here's a picture of a cozy place:
I understand the frustration about the quality of content (or lack thereof) that you express here. I like to think of this as a reflection of the world and societies that we form a part of. There is an insane amount of crap out there, and there is a willing audience that is ready to buy that crap as long as it confirms to their preexisting bias or prejudice. Or if it makes them money. We can expect to see the same in this website because it is just a smaller sample of the real world.
Having said that, the world has managed to remain a little sane and rational (I know you can dispute that) and there are little rays of light scattered around here and there if you are really serious about looking. Well-intentioned people in the real world have been known to give up and stop trying, yes. And that can be expected to happen here too. So I am eager to see how this experiment involving a tussle of reason, silliness, and greed turns out in the end. It will at least tell us a little bit more about our world.
Hello,
Thank you for commenting. Your posts seem to be interesting. I just started following you and will read your posts.
I'm not sure I agree with your idea that this community is just a smaller sample of every other community. I feel like anti-science is stronger here than elsewhere.
Hey @odd1, commenting here just to correct some misunderstandings. Actually, Steemit was having problems with posting, commenting and upvoting stuff and so many people were complaining about one post being published multiple times. So that could be the problm with the guy you have mentioned.
I can't imagine someone with 61 reputation points would spam posting the same post as no one would want to lose their hard earned repo. :D
Peace and Happy blogging!! :))
Welcome to steemit @odd1.
Yes, it is (maybe even worse).
You already mentioned the global-warming deniers and anti-vaxxers, but have you found the flat-earthers on steemit?
There are high amounts of steempower owned by and delegated to users promoting such nonsense.
Be a bit careful with exposing and downvoting this BS, look for example what happened to the account of one of my followers after posting this or more recently to this account.
As already remarked, some of the double postings these days are caused by the fact that steemit.com is not working properly and some operations are not getting displayed. When up/downvoting or posting something, it's advisable to look at steemd.com whether the operation has been processed.
But what one can see at these repeated posts is that a high percentage of votes is automated and done by bots, and many users (including ones with very high steempower) don't read what they upvote.
Maybe the steemstem tag is better when looking for science posts, the science tag is often spammed with pseudo-science. There is a community of people interested in science: https://steemit.chat/channel/steemSTEM
Please don't use the introduceyourself tag repeatedly, it should only be used once (I think you can edit tags apart from the first one).
Hello,
I've edited the post and removed the introduceyourself tag.
I had no idea this site had flat earthers. I mean, that's a new low. That's a whole new level of stupidity, damn. I can't comprehend how one can believe such a thing.
I'm aware that the double postings were not OPs fault. He told me he got an error and so he kept clicking on "post". What I meant to say is what you said, much more eloquently than I did, the community upvotes without paying attention, apparently by using bots.
Thank you for commenting. I will continue downvoting anti-vaxxers, anti-global-warming and all the other BS. Hopefully others will too (you included).
Hi, I also agree with you here. Crap posts being upvoted, nonsense anti-global warming posts also getting upvoted (for all we know global warming is happening right in front of our very eyes). After reading your whole post I came to realize that because of the rewards steemit is offering people flocked to steemit with the hope of earning. When a reward is offered expect that people will grab the opportunity including those who have little to offer that end up spamming, plagiarizing, and copy pasting articles from the internet. With that said, its negative effects will be the negative you see on steemit like spam, plagiarism, copy paste, hate, bullying, trolling, nonsense. These effects are the reflection of the society we live in. Let's admit it that every social media we see today have its negative and positive effects.
To be honest I am struggling to find a rational person like you here in steemit that seem to care on the society we live in. Most steemit users I came to see are just posting to earn and be upvoted by a bot they pay to upvote their posts.
Hello,
Thank you for commenting. There are others like us. Instead of reading #science you should read #steemscience, though I don't think creating a new tag is the answer to the problem. What happens when the nutjobs learn of #steemscience? Will they start tagging their non-science posts with #steemscience?
I think one possible answer to this is to start using chainBB instead of steemit/busy. ChainBB is segregated by forums, each forum pertaining to a different topic (just like subreddits on reddit). The owner/admin of a forum has the capacity to hide posts, mark them as "spam" if you will.
Regarding the vote bots, I'm 100% with you. I think those should be banned. I don't think paying to have your posts upvoted is good practice.
I've read some of your posts and they're nice. Sadly, they don't seem to be drawing much attention. I suggest you start creating some relationships by commenting on others' post (like you're doing here), to build a following. I call this the "dirty work". I've given up on earning any money, I'm just commenting and posting as if I was on reddit. If the money comes, good, if it doesn't, good also; I've no expectations.
This is the first time that I came to know about chainBB I might as well try to check it. Yeah, bots should definitely be banned. To be honest again I am very much picky on what posts to comment on. Like I said, I am also struggling to find posts that I have common ground or interested to begin with and also add that I am always busy. But I will do your suggestion on commenting to build a following.
That is really an important issue. And there is option for the other users to down vote spam content. They should practice it on such scammer.
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