The other night I exchanged a couple comments with @V4vapid when the conversation turned to the topic of advertising.
You can read it here:
@V4vapid mentioned that he naturally wants to Steemit to remain advertising-free. I think most on here will agree that is a desired outcome. Unlike Facebook and other sites, it is nice to open up a page without being flooded with ads. The same is true for D.Tube. We can view videos without having to wait for the advertisements to go through.
I think if the proposal to allow ads was passed before the community, it would be voted down. I mean, seriously, is there more of a no-brainer in the world?
Or is there?
One thing that comes to mind is do we have the "right" to ban advertising?
We promote ourselves as censorship-free. Yet, if we ban people from saying something, isn't that censorship? We like to say we are open and accepting of all kinds of speech, doesn't advertising fall under the same category. Is it my right to tell you what you can post on your blog? The answer is obviously "no". Then, by the same token, is it within the community right to dictate what you can or cannot do? I think most would agree it cannot.
Hence the dilemma that arises. What was once an easy situation suddenly turns a bit cloudier.
Which brings up another point: who has the rights we are referring to?
Many governments, including the U.S., determined that corporations have the same rights as people. Certainly, many on here take exception to that so it is not a given that the community will arrive at that conclusion. But again, do we have the right to ban corporations from opening accounts on this blockchain? Getting back to the individual, should we stop someone who wants to open up an account in his/her business name? Aren't we censoring then?
We obviously saw what happens to sites like Facebook when the advertising model kicks in. One thing I will say is that with cryptocurrency, the need to garner money via advertising is mostly eliminated. Facebook and other social media sites depend upon traffic which enables them to amass advertising revenue. This is how their business is funded.
On the blockchain is the payout schedule for the cryptocurrency going forward. The blockchain, itself, is what has the value, not the apps. Facebook has to generate revenue to keep Wall Street happy. On here, the blockchain generates the revenue through the token distribution. The only variable is how much STEEM is worth compared to other currencues, fiat or crypto.
I guess the bottom line is there is a choice. Is a ban on advertising more important than being free of censorship?
As I ponder this, it does not look like we can have both. If the community can prevent someone (or something) from advertising, what else could they prevent? What is the next step?
Isn't this what we witnessed from many governments? They start small and continually erode people's rights. At first you cannot scream "fire" in a crowded movie theater. This makes sense to everyone, so they agree. The next thing you know, there is a thing called political correctness and if you are on the wrong side of that, watch out.
It appears our buddies over at Facebook and Google are on a censorship rampage taking people out left and right. How well do you think that is going to work for them long-term? Even in the short-term, we see a number of people on here who said they are done with those two sites for this specific reason.
My feeling is that all models are going to be disrupted by blockchain. As we enter the Age of Abundance, we are going to see the need for advertising diminish. This is really going to become obvious once the next generation of blockchain apps enter the picture i.e. DAOs or DACs. As these become more common, I believe the advertising model will lessen.
I do not want to hijack this article, so I won't delve into my theory on this other than to say one should not assume AI or software will have human emotions, motives, or beliefs. In fact, it is very likely they do not.
Personally, I am like @V4vapid; I want to see Steemit advertising-free. If, for some reason, the central players there decided to raise money through advertising, I would choose an interface that allowed me to operate ad-free.
That said, I do not think that we can just ban advertising. Being one who abhors censorship, having witnessed what the governments of the world did (and now these mega-corporations), I do not feel we have the right to tell anyone (or anything) what is can post. While I am not for giving a corporation the same rights as a person, how can we tell? Also, if Apple wanted to open up a page here, who are we to say no? And what if it wasn't Apple but,rather, some individual shop owner who sells Apple products?
When you start saying Apple cannot sign up, then the door is opened. After that it is whites, blacks, Christians, Muslims, disabled, or left-handed people who cannot sign up. Then we progress to the non-educated, unemployed, and non-wealthy.
Carry this out far enough and the only ones who will be on STEEM in 15 years will be Bill Gates, Tim Cook, and Elon Musk.
(Sorry Elon, you are out too..you are just too loony with that trying to fly into space while drilling into the ground)
What are you thoughts on this? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section...this is a subject that I think warrants discussion.
If you found this article informative, please give it an upvote and a resteem.
Pictures by Google Images
I don't think anything needs to change in respect to advertising. If a company wants to post an advert or information about a product that's fine, and then it will be down to the community to upvote or downvote them or react however they see fit.
The problem is that a single whale can have the power of 10000 votes.
The world is already going crazy with left vs right, race suddenly being an "issue" again.
We've already got SJW bully campaigns to literally get people fired from their jobs.
Any opinion you don't like can be flagged in the same way as an opinion you do like can be upvoted.
Granted, it's still a better alternative than what we have now but it doesn't exactly solve the problem. :/
Not quite the same way because the financial incentive is to upvote things rather than downvote them. As long as people care about making money there will always be far more upvotes on Steemit than downvotes.
There’s already quite a bit of advertising here. Lots of people have affiliate links, I’ve seen people touting silver for sale, etc.
And The Steemit FAQ says the site is censorship-resistant, not censorship-free.
Not always. I will flag hate-speech in a heartbeat. They’ll scream censorship. TFB.
And that is your right...your votes are yours to do with as you wish.
Of course, what is hate speech? Isnt that something that society has taken too far in many instances?
Today, if someone gets offended by something another says, it often is described as hate speech.
Taken to the extreme, isnt calling Trump or Schumer idiots, morons, pieces of garbage hate, especially since all those attacks are based upon a disagreement with one's political flavor?
As always, where is the line.
And yes there is advertising by individuals already, and perhaps companies..is that something that should continue.
I don’t flag simply because they’re on the other side of the aisle.
But there’s been overt Naziism, Holocaust denial, and such posted at Steemit. That’s the kind of thing that I’ll flag.
Advertising per se doesn’t bother me.
But I’d draw the line at pop-up ads. 😅
I understand what you are saying....I can see that and respect the right of one to draw the line wherever he or she feels like.
I had some who flagged on moral grounds when I was simply the messenger...thinking of an announcement with Vice....some might not like porn yet a few on here want to flag that...even an announcement.
Far too many take not liking something and categorize it in another manner (not making that statement aimed at you, just a general one).
You can flag what you want, it's everyone's free choice to flag. I'll never flag a post. People are entitled to their opinion and I'd rather know what everyone really thinks and be able to address it than have them hide their opinions out of fear. You can't change someone's mind if you don't know what they're thinking.
And I think an advertising ban is stupid, like you've said there's already plenty of self-selling and shilling on the platform, why not ban all of that. Oh, then there'd be no point for over half the large posters to use steemit, that's why.
Yeah but at the end of the day, a single whale, or a small group of whales, can essentially take down any new voice they don't like.
STEEM is inflationary too, which means it won't be much harder to get in the future as it will now, right? So OG's don't nessecarily have more power than, let's say if the russian government decides to fuck with what's posted on here.
I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. But this actually sounds more messed up than having a single company in decide what is and isn't posted...
Inflation is actually going down by half a percent every year until it reaches half a percent a year. Basically everyone had gobs of steem from the shadowmining and a period of high inflation for a while there then if you got in late... too bad.
Not sure companies will hop on the Steemit train, because although they would be able to up-vote their ad to the top of whatever "Tag" they wanted via their infinite dollars, who the hell is going to read it, up-vote it, or re-Steem it?
More than likely, big whales on here would flag it, and then they'd just leave wouldn't ya say?
Exactly, big companies buying a ton of STEEM for the purpose of self voting up their own ads would not do their image many favours imo
No, it definitely would not, and I think they understand this already.
Depends what you mean by advertising. If steemit INC decides to display banner adds down the side of the page, we can always use busy.org or some other interface/site.
If I drop one of these at the end of each post;
There's not a lot anyone can or should do to stop me, beyond unfollowing and/or muting.
Maybe Coke is paying me, maybe I really love Coke.
When advertising does arrive, I think it'll look a lot like this.
@mattclarke you are right, not much we could do about banner ads. I'd like to discuss more.....but I'm felling....so.....thirsty....
Thanks for all of the great points you brought up here. I do also love that Steemit is ad-free for now. As for the future, well, who knows?
I do feel like the biggest problem with advertising online is that ad agencies don't ask for the right to shove stuff into our faces. They assume that right. It's like because we're online, they expect we'll happily accept anything they want to throw onto our screens, which is why more people are buying ad and pop-up blockers now than ever.
I think if any platform needs to incorporate ads, it could do so ethically as long as they ask people first. People should be able to choose whether they want to see ads or not and also WHO they want to see ads from. They should be able to choose WHERE and WHEN those ads appear.
If a website needs to display ads for funding, then give the users an option to make a donation in order to turn off all the ads on their end!
Just thinking out loud here. 😎 Which is what I do when I'm not working on writing the comedy series on my blog...
Resteemed, followed and upvoted!
Perhaps opt-in advertising.
If you want to watch an ad, they have to give you some STEEM for it.
Provide incentive to you to watch it and compensate you for the intrusion.
I actually really like that model. Anytime I download a free game I understand that there will probably be ads. The developers put a lot of work in to the game and they should be compensated for their work. However, games that provide an incentive to watch the advertisement are doing it the right way in my opinion. I would love to see some statistics on advertising revenue of systems that give an incentive to users to watch ads vs. systems that force ads on their users.
The problem is though that then people will try to game the system and you will get 'professional' ad watchers, which isn't very good from the advertisers perspective.
Ad agencies are a piece of ass. My problem with them is the way they waste your time when you are online and keep shoving the shit into your face even when you don't need them. But If for any reason, ads have to run on steemit, they should have specific tags where one can go to, and rummage through, for whatever it is they want. No body appreciates being coerced in anyway.
Nice information, thanks for sharing.
Like you, I can't see adverts making it onto Steemit, because it'd never get "voted in" by the community.
But, that's traditional advertising. What about content created by a business?
Smart businesses aren't advertising on social media now - they're creating content around their brand - inserting their brand into the conversation.
What would your thoughts be on this? What if an existing Steemit account, with lots of followers was posting "branded content", like an influencer on Instagram does? What if a business was contributing to the Steemit community and, rather than blatantly advertising with "buy our product/service" posts, was inserting their brand into the conversation?
You could argue that every photographer and artist on Steemit is "advertising" every time they post their work.
I'm with you on not wanting traditional advertising on Steemit, but marketers adapt to any environment. I think what we'll see is that the community will vote with their actions, and it'll come down to a value exchange between entertainment and attention.
I agree @m-ssed-t.
We need to define advertising although we could take the approach it is all advertising. Arent many of us on here building a brand through out writings and interactions? Hence, when we go out "promoting" ourselves via networking, arent we doing the same thing? Sure it isnt a pop up ad, but we are still trying to attract people to our blog (which can have a monetary value).
As for the first part, certainly there is nothing wrong with that. I think smart companies/individuals do that...mix the promotion in with the story line.
If we want to remain censorship free then certainly we need to allow corporations to operate on Steemit. And some may even bring value. As far as actual advertisements go I would hate to see that happen here, but I don't believe anyone has the right to tell others what they can and can't do with their blogs.
However, if the community is by-and-large against advertising they simply won't upvote (and could even flag) those who include advertisements on their blogs. Once that happens it's no longer worth it for the blogger or the advertiser to place advertisements...at least on that particular blog.
So, the good thing we have here (vs YT and FB) is that the community actually does have a say in the usage of advertisements.
Now, what if Steem Inc were to decide to add advertisements to everyone's blog?
Great post..Keep it up...
I appreciate your post..Actually your post ..I follow your post...
Thanks for sharing...
I will wait for new post..
You do realise that if you actually wrote decent comments rather than spam, you might actually make some money right?
good post thanks for sharing...
We do have a promoted section. I think more people should use it and support our advertisers. We also have those annoying robots as well. :(
Hello friend
Nice post from your behalf.
Am new on steemit and i made my fourth post but i think i need your help .
Can you please check it up and follow as i did.? Say yes because i dont want to miss your posts and vise vesa
Click to check https://steemit.com/steemit/@showboybeezy/my-plan-for-each-day-on-steemit
Leaving comments asking for votes, follows, or other self promotional messages could be seen as spam.
Your Reputation Could be a Tasty Snack with the Wrong Comment!
Thank You! ⚜
everyon want to be freedom in their life
carry on
freedom is need in every human life
your activity is good
thanks for the valuable post
keep it up
Very thought provoking. You are so right. At first it is really easy to just say no ads or no businesses. But on the other hand you are correct that is censorship. That is a lot to think about. Great way of presenting a dilemma we will all be faced with. Think open communication is always the best way to figure out these types of problems
You bring advertisements on Steemit, you will create the same effect as Facebook or Google. The outcome, people will start to disengage from the platform with invasive and annoying ads all over the place.
it is clear that advertising can not be forbidden. but I do not want to see it on the site page. I want to have a choice. that is, if I want to read the advertisement, then I will find the ad tag and look. I do not want to see ads in an obsessive like on facebook
When you put it in this light seriously I have to take a long thoughts about it. Having read the article twice now. I think sometimes we will have to accept certain discomfort in order to grow together.
On the issue of ads it will depends on who runs the ads, if a business opens an account and post ads on it. There's no problem as I will choose what to read and what not to. But if the people running the blockchain desire to take on the ads and push them into people's blog and feed just like Facebook do, then that's where the main challenge will come.
So in conclusion, we shouldn't ban people from writing whatever they want even if its ads but this shouldnt be paid ads that have to be forced on people's blogs.
I agree that now the advertisement has filled the whole world, including the Internet space, individual social networks and even our daily life. Is advertising useful to society or individuals? The only thing to whom advertising is useful is to those who earn money on it. For ordinary users, as we advertise - this is information garbage.
Community Steemit does not adhere to censorship and so in your thinking you are faced with a dilemma. In fact, if corporations or individuals want to advertise their products here, nobody prevents them from doing it.
But users who do not approve advertising can simply ignore this information. On their advertising simply there should be no demand. It seems to me that this will be regulated by the users themselves.
Thank you, interesting topic
this is great investing sir and thanks for sharing this, this is something new to me.
Yeah sure. I quite agree with some of the points you raised. But then again, Steemit compared to other platforms is still young and growing up. And before implementing such a decision, I think both parties (the advertisers and the viewers) should be considered. If advertisements would rake in more money for the community but would cause a drop in the number of members in this group (when they become disinterested), I guess the community should weigh their options and purpose for creating this community if its a profit driven project or a people driven project. So I would suggest they settle down and think about the options they have and the consequences too.
Buh even in our very own subtle way, as far as its a community of people, definitely some level of advertisements would always come in.. Thanks @taskmaster4450 and @V4vapid for raising this sensitive issue. I'm sure those in charge would get to look at the various suggestions and recommendations
very informative post...thanks for share
Banning ads is not censorship. An Ad does not contribute to a site but takes from it , solicited from it. You can post what ever you want, any subject. Thats free speech and a right. Let us not confuse the two...my two cents. good post with information that I had no idea about , and now I'm informed thanks to you
in my view this is more of us as ads free site for article publishing and other working methods. @steemit also work to generate revenue from ads as i say steemit right if they want to show ads on site.
I have to agree. If we start to accept ads, then we tend to have to agree with what brands say or pay. That's how youtube lost the right to freedom of expression. And now people are moving to DTube. I prefer not to take side but monetization is a big question if crypto goes down steemit needs to find something as an alternative to keep system going.
Rydhi
xox
If you ask me, advertising is already part of the Steemit ecosystem... Be it voting bots or the Promoted section.
I do not like the idea of ads interfering with the way of my content consumption like banner ads all over the site or more irritatingly commercial breaks as in YouTube while watching videos (how foolish was I when I completely moved from TV to the internet because I was pissed with ad-breaks).
If advertisers open accounts the same way we do and promote the content the way we do, then I don't think we have the right to stop them.
At the same time, the system should have mechanisms to ensure that advertising dollars do not take over the platform in a way that indie content creators are just gobbled up by big money.
It's nice, thanks
I’m one of those people who have cut back on Facebook to spend more time on Steemit! Just have to try to get more of my friends from there to come here!
Hey guys just would like to THANK YOU all for supporting me and to remind you to UPVOTE / RESTEEM my post along with leaving a comment so that I can upvote your comments.
"We obviously saw what happens to sites like Facebook when the advertising model kicks in."
This. We study history so we don't repeat it. FB has turned into one big Advertisement.. and we are the product.
I wrote a bit about why FB is toxic, and why as Steemian's we should be the change we wish to see - convert your friends, family and others to Steemit.
Who wouldn't want to be rewarded for the content they curate?
I upvoted just for the until Texas executes one thing!! OMG funny.. good read also. I would have to say that if the community passes a vote to allow ads the revenue should be sunk into making out steem worth more.
If a company wants to open up an account and put their products on there in whatever fashion they like, then I'd say go for it. People can then choose if they want to look at it. What I don't like is when adverts are flashed in my face without any choice. I guess they could advertise via comment spamming though, which could get annoying... but then I suppose it wouldn't be long before their rep is so low that the spam would be hidden.
I don't think we should censor by banning certain types from getting accounts. We have the freedom to choose not to view those accounts. I'm not up for no choice about viewing advertising though, because takes my freedom away.
I think there is an important distinction here though... we don't choose to have the ads thrust upon us on those other platforms. The ads on Youtube delay me from the content I'm actually on... the ads on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter delay the content of my friends from being shown.
Ads will absolutely appear on Steem, but it will be on content that we choose to click on. Or, some vloggers might talk about products/services in the middle of their content, but we can still choose whether to watch them or not.
What I see happening is companies or famous CEOs jumping on Steem and investing in the platform... and then upvoting content that speaks positively about them. A $10,000 upvote for my post about how Coke tastes better than Pepsi, the Blockchain would be overrun will copycat articles.
Regardless, we can still choose the content that we view, and that's the power of Steem over everything else.
Steemit is just an application on Steem blockchain. Well, adding ads or not is totally depends on the front-end provider. In our case, it is Steemit. If it decide to allow ads and the users who don't like it can just switch to other platform like Busy.org.
The traffic will show the answer, and this is how the free market works too. I'm totally fine with that.
I don't think we can avoid advertising, but it will be different on steem. I'm guessing people or businesses will pay high profile users to mention them in videos and place ads on their posts. The payment might be in steem, but I don't think anyone will be able to get away from this, unless people decide they don't want to advertise someone else's product. But I really don't think it will be a bad thing, if you don't like the ads just stop following the person.
One thing to watch out for will be using voting bots. If enough corporations create accounts here they can take up the entire trending page with crap ads. Then we can flag them all haha. It could get interesting, but I don't think we can censor unless we do it as a group.
I put advertising in the same category as NSFW... some love it, some hate it... If we have one, what's so earth-shattering about having the other - as long as it can be completely turned off (and there's no tracking)?
One of the two would bring money directly to the platform, the one that everyone hates the most...
Just my two thoughts ☺
Hey man...
I am not as sure as you on the community voting down advertisement. If the bloggers would get paid directly from them "a la" Steem Blockchain style, would it still get refused?
I dont know.
Plus, when I saw this:
I felt like I had to mention BitConnect :P
I feel there is a bit of confusion in the comments. Adding ads to this website (Steemit.com) is dumb and pointless and we can all agree on that, but I think companies posting content (like we do) that is or contains ads are a totally different story.
The first one is dumb as it is anywhere else because it is usually in no context to the rest of the content on the website and there is usually no reason to look at an ad. Additionally, you cannot interact with the ad at all. No commenting an no liking/disliking possible.
But if a company writes a Steemit post with ads in it, we as Steemit users can at least use our votes to punish unfitting ads and like or comment on ads that are interesting.
This made me think, nope any kind of censorship is a slippery slope...but can we ban spam....? Meaning most Steemians see commercial advertisement as spam...like what tries everyday to flood your email account.
That being said, I feel you are correct to say, if it does occur. ..it will not work on a decentralized platform for long...it will fade away and be put in the lower cabinet where you keep the Ronco pizza maker...
As always thanks for the intelligence brief.
How about we let Tide Pods create an account and they can blog about their products, create videos on dTube, upvote and resteem.
And we can choose to watch their product advertising and upvote and resteem there quailty content.
As long as I don't "have" to watch there product advertising, I'm good with them being here.
They can start as a tiny fish, just like the rest of us. Then we can see how serious they are about being here. Enjoyed this one too Task. 😎
I think there are two different types of advertisements. For instance, there are members of STEEMIT who have associated websites that are all about commerce. I have no problem with that, in fact commerce, exchange of good and services, has already begun and is being transacted in STEEM!!!!! Peer to peer transactions are at the heart of any crypto-currency. I believe this is a positive development! If you are referring to advertisements like on Youtube where the ads are imposed upon the audience I am firmly opposed. If a large corporation wants to join STEEMIT and post about their wares, let them earn their following, no harm in that. just my thoughts. I did write a blog recently noting the beginning of commerce and its positive development. https://steemit.com/steemsilvergold/@handofzara/beyond-the-reward-pool-real-commerce-and-wealth-creation-in-steemsilvergold
We are all walking advertisements.
After all, we are selling our writing, and wanting people to read it.
You've opened Pandora's box with this post :))) I'm just going to say that everyone is free to post whatever they want and it is up to their followers to sanction advertising by not upvoting that post for example.
I think that, at least a short-term solution, would be to enable your blog for ads or not, and then pick who is allowed to advertise on it. I am pretty much against flagging anyone on grounds for hate speech or anything like that. The only thing I really flag is clickbait, and that's even hard to define.
As long as adds are related to account so I can choose to see them or not for me it is not a problem. as @preparedwombat said
My point is as long as they are like account I can follow or unfollow them and that is it.
I agree with a few things already having been said in the comment section. I think there is the ability for corporations to Try to use the site for advertisement but I don't think it would benefit them enough for it to be worth their while. Especially with the easy potential of whales having them bookmarked as posts to flag.
It is a very interesting point, but I think Steemit kind of works in the favor of being community - run (to some extent). Sure there are some kinks to work out, but it's pretty good for now! :)
What is stopping people from advertising already? We don't need advertising features as the blockchain already provides the infrastructure. If people want to see the ads, then they can follow their favorite corporation. I think what people would object to most is if the platform started forcing the adds on their screen. I myself would not subscribe to a corporation to see their adds, so then I should not have to worry about seeing their stuff on my screen. But why not invite them in. I see no reason not to keep them out. But they must behave and learn how to function in anarchy system. They may not like the results! They will have to play with respect or they may find themselves in a voting war.