Bots have always been a thing in the STEEMsphere, but the open and honest vote buying bots are a rather new invention. Originally, content creators competed with each other for the whale votes. Usually getting one whale vote resulted in the rest of the whales following suit and stacking up on a post.
And what you said is what a lot of people have been saying: it's nearly impossible to compete with the bots and big self-votes. That's what makes a lot of people lose hope.
It's easy to say that "Oh, you're just here for the money?", but that's a little short-sighted. Steemit is a game, of sorts. And when people start playing a game, they want to play to win. They get frustrated when they feel that the rules are unfair. Whether they are or aren't isn't even the issue, it's whether or not they feel that they are.
And it seems like a lot of people do.
Like I said in the post, the unfortunate reality is that Steemit is no longer really a competition between content, it's just a competition between who wants to shill the most money into his or her content.
And hey, that case can be defended, too. It's just that liked the original idea more. It's a personal preference.
Why do you think that case can be defended? I mean if you see this purely as crypto game, why would above invest money in it? What gives the crypto currency value? For paying a game and see who invests most and cheats best?
I could be exaggerating a bit. But I hope you understand what I mean?
Yeah, I getcha.
It can be defended by using the free market argument. Steemit is decentralized and free, and in a wild west people can basically do as they please.
There's no central authority or set of laws here, so anything goes, basically.
Is all of the behavior desirable? Absolutely not. And I myself have grown a bit more skeptical towards the whole idea of a decentralized network like this even being able to produce a result that's in line with what people feel is a desirable end result.
As evidenced by what goes on in here.
There is no such thing as a free-market argument; such an argument would assume that a free market is optimal for all groups and societies, or maybe some sort of religious Holy Grail that cannot be doubted. As yet, this is unprovable, and there is plenty of evidence that unbounded free-market economies may not yield the most pleasant of societies.
I just felt like disagreeing with someone. Must be the heat.
I think we are basically on the same line.
At first I believed that this could and would be a really awesome decentralized social media platform. Where one as bonus could earn some money. And real good bloggers could earn quite some money.
Nowadays it looks more like a crypto game that basically doesn't have any ethical rules.
Steemit could be showing that it's almost impossible to create a decentralized platform that works pretty well.
But I still keep my hopes up for a social media platform that financially rewards its users in such a way that at least 95% of the users agree to the system. Which also should really in higher numbers of active users and keeping them to hang around for a long(er) period of time.