These kind of problems would be greatly alleviated with a fairer distribution of wealth. Thankfully, we have some big fish who are decent enough and see how this kind of problem will hurt the platform as a whole, but it would be nice if we didn’t have to rely on support from the biggest members of our community to safeguard against this kind of abuse.
I don’t see a purpose in adding an extra downvote feature (aside from flagging) to encourage more downvoting towards those we may disagree with. Do we really want to use this mechanism to make it harder for those with unpopular opinions to share them? Flags/downvotes should simply be a mechanism for curbing unsavory and malicious activity or activity that takes advantage of the reward pool.
It would be nice if we could downvote downvotes, but once again it would require a different kind of algorithm where it wouldn’t take 100 minnows to combat a whale and it wouldn’t suck up our voting power.
Anyway, I’m happy the community DID come together and that you got your payout in the end.
The power distribution of steemit really does turn everyone into a
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sycophant
People are afraid to even critique anything. All I see is meaningless, hollow praise. How can we build up something better if everyone is afraid of pointing out obvious flaws? At most people are passive-aggressive, avoid actually talking with each other and just to each other, and just have proxy flag wars. That's about it, but that's different than my other contention that no one ever questions anything that's ever written, spoken, drawn, shot, memed, or anything here. The core quality of the content is just not good on steemit. At least. not the content that shares an overlap with other social media.
We cannot compete with other platforms if content or community does not draw the attention of the user. Dollar signs next to random numbers draw the attention of some, to be sure, but to actually keep people here they need to not feel like they're constantly walking on eggshells and never able to express their true selves. They need to feel that their voice and their vote have impact and gravity no matter their bank account size. They like democratic voting measures where one person's vote counts. The know that even though their platform of choice may be infested with bots and corporations trying to meddle or peddle, good, dank material and lasting truths always float up past the shilled shit. People need to feel like they're making good use of their media consumption time by actually consuming GOOD content.
The internet is a place where the competition is vast, the meme-makers are skilled, and information travels fast. It's a big, scary world out there. You might find out that the shit that flies here and passes for a hot post wouldn't see the light of day in places where people don't give a fuck how much money you have. Maybe my taste in humor is different but just for an example try to be really, really fucking honest with yourself when I ask this simple question. Which social media website would you voluntarily use to find the absolute funniest shit on the internet on the most consistent basis if your paycheck didn't depend on it. If the answer isn't steemit it's because we're doing something terribly fucking wrong.
A system that actually rewarded fucking kickass content creators and consumers of said content would see explosive growth the likes of which has rarely been seen in the literal history of the internet. You probably have enough fingers and toes to count all the social media websites that have really taken off.
The best shit has to be able to be seen and found easily. Real people hate fake bullshit. It's as simple as that. Real people hate it when shit is rigged and they can tell right away that something ain't right, that that's not what a frontpage should look like, those aren't the posts that should be trending, that oh dear god, god no is that literally the fifth time that same dead horse has been resuscitated and beaten to death yet again in one more cash-grab of the day why am I even bothering with this shit I'm going back to twitter/facebook/youtube/instagram/reddit/medium/google+/myspace/newdigg/anythingbutthisdumpsterfirewherequalityandhumorgoestodie.
And has anyone on steemit realized that people don't want to replicate that warm, fuzzy feeling they get when they're being watched over the shoulder by HR and managers at their soul-sucking dream-crushing corporate job when they're on a social media site browsing at home? Holy shit people, wake the hell up. There's a reason no one stays here for long.
Do you think that Steemit can evolve, without including censorship, toward a community that truly rewards great content creators and doesn't bring fear of angering a random whale?
It’s all about culture really...people are generally afraid of making others angry OR they’re pissed and enjoy making others angry. If enough of us with the intention of protecting freedom and encouraging peaceful discussion become big fish, I’d say we have a shot. But most of us grew up with petty parents, restrictive education and society full of paradox, so we have a lot of work to do.
I understand the frustration with seeing mediocre content getting such massive rewards, but I disagree that there isn’t lot of great content on here. It just doesn’t always get rewarded appropriately. Notariety seems to matter more than quality, and SOMETIMES notieriaty comes from good content. More often it comes from having a big fat upvote and friends with big fat upvotes who put you on autovote.
Still, I’m not craving the polarized arguments of other platforms. I think we can disagree respectfully, as I often do...or just ignore people who aren’t going to listen to what we have to say anyway.
I could easily reply to every post on anarchy-capitalism that I think anarcho-capitalism is a pretty stupid fucking oxymoron because those who have the most will become state like entities unless they are intent on creating a world with distributed power. I could say that any argument about human nature is null and void because anyone with such a certain one sided stance on human nature doesn’t know shit about human nature. Now I don’t say that on the billions of posts that seem to think govt. sucks but capitalism is the shit because I know peoples beliefs generally don’t change when you attack them or try to belittle them. I’m also willing to admit that I may have something to learn from ANYONE.
So if you are hungry for controversy. Go somewhere else dude, it’s not difficult to find. I have a ton of unpopular opinions and I speak them openly and enough people still like me cause I bring up these unpopular opinions mainly just to search for solutions peacefully. If people want to turn this place into a shithole, either from too much controversy or too much ass kissing, I’ll try to gather the community I’ve forged here and head off somewhere better, cash out my Steem and put it somewhere else. For now I still see lots of forward thinking, open minded and interesting people having productive conversations here to warrant putting lots of time into the platform, and it’s paying off. I mean only telling you this cause I was you a few months ago and now I’m kicking myself because that was three months wasted just focusing on the negative shit.
Hope you stick around and channel your dissatisfaction into something productive that you can feel good about, like I have.