We all know that the marketing for steem has been very limited throughout it's short story. The @promo-steem group put in good work to bring in new users globally, but there has been no big drive or budget to go beyond this.
The recent (and long predicted) moves by 'big tech' to censor and erase dissenting voices from their platforms has accelerated in the last few days, with facebook removing over 500 pages that they falsely claim to be 'spam farmers' effectively, but where in truth many of them offer valid political and activist commentary and actual real world activities. See my post on this here for more details.
Add to this the recently leaked document from Google entitled 'The Good Censor', which lays out the agenda of 'big tech' to move away from 'liberty/freedom' and towards 'civility' (in this context aka 'censorship') - and we have the beginnings of a huge trigger for large numbers of people to leave these mega networks for competitors. See my post on this here for more details too.
Steem Powered Sites Can Solve This Problem
Given that the causal factor here is largely censorship, the Steem blockchain is in a truly unique position to benefit by receiving many of the users who are upset with being denied free speech and the inherent disrespect and dishonesty involved with the situation. No-one likes being trolled, but being trolled by large corporations under the guise of them 'standing up against trolling' is too much for many people to bare and they WILL look elsewhere to connect with people online. Steem's strongest feature, as far as I am concerned, is not it's ability to pay for posts - instead, the best feature is the high difficulty that any group has in censoring posts on the Steem blockchain.
While it is true that posts can be 'hidden' by being downvoted by Steem users - these posts/comments are not actually completely removed and can be viewed by anyone who elects to click on them. The ultimate repository of the post's content is the Steem blockchain (a distributed database) - which is independent of steemit.com, busy.org, steempeak.com, d.tube or any of the other sites that make use of it. Any of these sites 'could' elect to block a post, but the post itself will still be accessible via the blockchain for those who need to access it. This is a dramatic improvement over the centralised, hierarchic and domineering situation we experience with the current social network/empires of Facebook and Google.
Some of the pages removed from Facebook have millions of followers, many of whom will be outraged that the people they admire and want to hear from have been silenced in an unfair way. Just imagine the boost that Steem would receive if these people elected to come and use Steem instead of Facebook.
There are currently between 30,000 and 60,000 active Steem users (last time I looked) - if even 1 million of these many million users came to Steem it would drastically change Steem's present and future.
Selling Steem's Censorship Proof Features to the World
In my opinion, the uncensored nature of Steem is one of it's strongest selling points and yet it is rarely even mentioned when discussing Steem. I feel this is because most people either haven't experienced that they have been censored or simply haven't noticed when they really have ben censored since no-one informed them and they never checked back in Facebook etc. to find out if their posts were visible to the world. It took me a few years to realise that the comments I was writing in Youtube weren't visible to other users as they were being 'sandboxed', which is a code word for 'censored'. You can see Facebook removing my comments in realtime here.
This hidden strength of Steem needs to be made more prominent now and this is an ideal opportunity to do it. Millions of people are being exposed to the shadowy world of corrupt and covert censorship online - so we need to inform them that a solution exists.
My suggestion is that we do the following.
Plan To On-Board New Users To Steem Who Abandon Facebook/Google
Collaborate with liked minded Steemians to build a support team to put this plan in to action.
Produce text, memes and video content to highlight the situation and promote the key selling points of Steem powered sites - focusing clearly on censorship resistance. Links should point to key posts on Steem that educate about ways to socially connect with like minds via Discord and Steem.chat - plus all the other features of Steem and related Steem powered sites.
Distribute this promotional material via all available, practical channels - targeting those users who have been affected on Facebook and beyond. Free options include posting to groups on Facebook and Google+ - as well as posting blogs, links and vlogs to Youtube and personal profiles on social networks with appropriate tags. Twitter is a good option due to the many users who are prominent free speech activists who gladly retweet such things.
Distribute to @promo-steem members to allow them to further the reach into local areas.
Inform new users to tag their #introduceme post with a custom tag, perhaps #SteemIsUncensored or something similar to allow them to be identified and guided/helped once signed up to Steem.
Suggested Keywords: #DeleteFacebook #WeChooseFreedom #SteemIsUncensored
Options for providing accounts to new users:
- Find Steemians with high Steem Power and resource credits who are willing to power this project by providing claimed accounts and maybe to delegate 3 Steem Power per account to ensure the new users can interact on the blockchain. Pool the accounts and organise a way of distributing them to new users and manage it, including delegating small amounts of steem and removing that delegation if the account is used for spam.
- Point new users to the standard options of signing up via Steemit.com or paying for an account via the third party services listed on the registration form of steemit.com.
People/Resources Needed
We need people to create promotional text/media, people to help with the signup process and people to work on social networks to promote the message. Ideally we would use an existing Discord group for this, with a new channel being created for this purpose.
Ideally we need some people to help who are proficient with using social media to spread messages in ways that don't annoy or get them censored / blocked too.
Comments?
What do you think? Can you help in any way? Let us know in the comments below.
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
Vote @ura-soul for Steem Witness!
(Witnesses are the computer servers that run the Steem Blockchain.
Without witnesses there is no Steem, Steemit, DTube, Utopian or
Busy... You can really help Steem by making your 30 witness votes count!)
I'm willing to delegate 30 steem for a month or two to help new uses get going.
Is there a group doing this now? Where I can join efforts.
I can see the long term for steem, we the people need a free and open platform that CAN'T BE CENSORED! And (hopefully) can't be shut down without great effort and cost.
As people realize this they will come but it needs to be easier and we the current users need to help them.
If we don't have free speech we don't have freedom, it's kind of the starting point for the whole Freedom Idea.
I'm not here for the money, as in payout for posts.
Yes that opened my eyes and made me look but once I saw and understood the big picture I was all in.
We need to promote steam as an all-inclusive ecosystem. As an actual option FOR THE PEOPLE, how it is distributed AND WHY (its distributed for just this reason, to resist censorship)
Point out that it's opposite of this globalist agenda that seems to want to control everything and everyone.
Anyway, that's why I'm a steemian and I'm not leaving until one of us, me or steem, dies.
Great, thanks for your support. We do not have anything concrete here yet - I was hoping that maybe one of the established Discord groups would respond and get involved, but I haven't seen a reply yet.
If I don't hear from them soon I will create a new Discord space.
I have long thought this aspect of the steem
Blockchain was one of its best selling & strongest features as well! We the people NEED sites like this so that we can retain and amplify our voices. I’m not on other media sites, but I will put my thinking cap on.
You notice that most of the people on those other platforms (i. e. facebook, twitter) are NOT there looking to "MAKE MONEY".
They are , or were (now that they are getting purged) for the interaction.
The most frustrating thing, I've noticed on steemit, is the "fuck interaction, I'm only here for the sheckles" attitude.
I write my original work and publish exclusively to the steem blockchain first, although I reserve, the right to post on other platforms later (weeks after the vote closes on steem).
I do this because I saw this coming long ago, and want to build up a true decentralized platform, that is owned by the stakeholders themselves.
The people I see on here that appear to be serious, and respect the platform, are few. People like yourself, that is why I vote for you as witness.
If people want to be heard then they will post where the people are to hear them. People who are on Steem are putting up with the underdeveloped state because they either see the vision of it's future or because they want to make money today. If Steem sites had the features of facebook that people like, plus the uncensored aspect and ability to get paid then I'm sure many more would come here.
We're developing a platform to do exactly that. AR and VR with steem backbone. I believe the best aspect of the software is how free it is, the added bonus is we can allocate resources this way. dlux.io / @dlux-io
A useful project for positioning steem as the socially conscious alternative to traditional medias and even platforms like the app and play store.
Would appreciate your feedback specifically... been following you for a while.
Greetings! Thanks for the link - I don't have much experience with VR / AR - but I certainly agree that using it to open links via QR codes is a good option in general for crypto and steem promotion too.
There ought to be a fund pool to be distributed to projects approved by maybe say stake power (Steem power). Instead of all the money going to witnesses, early investors and bloggers. It's the Tragedy of the Commons if a single witness decides to pay for ads or say pay for say developers of say Steemfiles. So in aggregate an investment which would help the Steem ecosystem should be paid by the blockchain itself.
Now voting on posts kind of allows this but it's the Tragedy of the Commons again.
This has been suggested in several ways by numerous people - including me. It appears that when it comes to supporting projects, Steemit Inc. prefers to keep the decisions centralised currently.
Yes. I am thinking we could do something like this on a microscale. I proposed a project for another alternative to downloading d-tube videos. Those that are interested can buy into it and and everyone else is locked out. The first ten users get a piece of the action. If nobody is interested, then I don't lift a finger beyond writing the proposal.
It is definitely a growing problem.
I do know that some of my colleagues in "alternative healing" have had their FB pages removed or "threatened" because their approaches (evidently?) didn't agree with the perspectives of FB's Big Pharma advertisers. Let's face it, it's a "risk" if people can read about working free remedies if they are trying to sell $200 prescriptions.
Like many, we are small and poorly funded, so most of what we can "do" amounts to spreading the word via word-of-mouth...
Bright Blessings!
Absolutely - I am seeing many of my posts being removed in FB - including just now when I shared a method of healing anxiety from a blog on Steemit!
I am trying with several Groups I set up on Facebook
Posted using Partiko iOS
Great, thanks!
steemit not for human now its only for bot . post and get upvoted by bots. In facebook or other sites people like your content but in steem no one even watch
Facebook has artificially limited the reach of posts for a long time. Some accounts there might have millions of followers but only 5% of them see the posts being made.
Steem has none of these problems and while the bots are a problem, I agree, it is one that can be fixed by US - whereas the problems in facebook have now way for us to fix them.
yeah you are right but i am using facebook since like 10 years i have many friends , i have nearly 500 followers but when i post pictures or any other post easily get 100+ likes and comments which is good and also steemit have to introduce chat system through this you can make new friends .. if they call steemit a social media then have to allow all features. Literally i am tired of steemit now just open once a day and watch no one likes each other post is that write ?
There are many issues with Steem based sites, yes - that is true.. However, this is essentially an open source project, which means that the community is building it itself. It is taking time, but gradually things are improving here. Steempeak.com is better than steemit.com and I imagine that when we see communities introduced, communication will improve. Currently the financial aspect of the system means that people are often here more for money than communication and that needs to change, I agree.
yeah you are right too, things have to be changed. Steemit developers should try to review and make decisions about it. Few month ago they started Steepshot which also failed. And community also not supportive they don't even reply you when you something or want some help. Whales occuied the steemit i have read few weeks ago post about whales
People who are socially oriented like using sites with evolved social features. People who are financially oriented will come to sites that are more money based. I am pushing for more social orientation and awareness of the need to do so here.
In my case i tried hard try everything no one respond so i tried bots which is not much profitable at low cost, as a student buying too much steempower is not easy so i try to lease loan from many big whales but no one even replies. Peoples only upvote those posts which give them back rewards that the harsh truth
Hi @ura-soul!
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Your rank has dropped 1 places in the last three days (old rank 96).
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