They have a share in Steemit. A share that increases by putting in work (either creating content or curating). And yes, they should. That's the whole point of the platform. That's also why SP can't be withdrawn immediately; it's an investment into the platform.
I often talk about community being an important part of Steemit, but the beauty of Steemit is that everyone is a curator. There is no board that nominates curators. There's no process one can game short of actually investing money into the platform, which enriches all of us because it raises the value of the token this entire thing is built on. Curators are already back by the community; groups like @minnowsupport and @curie are community-driven curation trails. @dragonslayer109, @rhondak and everyone at the Fiction Workshop, and hundreds of other groups of individuals all work tirelessly to find good content and promote it.
You're trying to address a problem that doesn't actually exist. The only thing I've gained from your post is that you don't like whales having as much of a say in which content gets a massive payout, despite their enormous investment into the platform which gave them their position. I understand that, but this isn't a problem. Egalitarianism always ends in a race to the bottom, particularly if it's top-down like this would have to be.
I'm getting really tired of people attacking those of us who bought in big to the platform. I've put damn near 100K into this platform and see non-stop proposals every day to try to reduce my influence or stake. I'm always treated like "the bad guy" because I think putting in a massive fucking investment into a massively risky platform should actually create some reward.
Minnows, stop being jealous that good writers who put in 5+ digits into this platform are more successful than your cat posts to 300 followers. If you don't like it, gtfo so I can actually curate /created again.
This rant is not directed at you, I am in agreement.
Could not have said it better myself, thanks!
Tell me about it. And then I get flack for defending you guys for investing into the platform to keep it alive. How the hell are people so economically illiterate that they don't realize whale funding is the only reason Steemit is still running at basically full speed?
It is not essencially wrong to run a half-plutocratic/half-aristocratic model, but that's not what most people are signing for and without the majority all your steem will have near-to-zero value in the future. Newcomers are realizing it and trying to change the way things are instead of just leaving. Being heavly invested in steem you should be grateful and not angry about it. ;)
The (currency) value of Steem Power rewards comes from those who are willing to buy it and literally nothing else. Newcomers who invest nothing actually cost the platform substantially, in account creation fees and delegated power. There are thousands of these users costing the platform money for every significant investor.
Which is more valuable to court, and which is in shorter supply, is fairly obvious.
The value of BTC is just as you describe Steem. The number of users of Steem, however, is driven by Steemit. If Steemit fails, Steem will no longer have a use case, which will negatively impact it's value.
More significantly, the reverse is true. It is the content that users, those that invest nothing but time, money, and expertise, bring to Steemit, upon which the value of Steem depends.
This was the intent of Steemit. This is it's whole raison d'etre, according to the white paper.
I have nothing but good things to say about investors in Steem, however, investors traditionally invest in order to achieve capital gains, not to complain about the workers in the plant 'that only cost investors wages'.
It is those workers that potentiate Steem having any value beyond what BTC does.
Hey, I just want to clarify some confusion, and say that I totally agree with you.
Newcomers being a cost is fact. They cost money in account creation and delegation, I've seen the numbers.
However, I was referring to these ones:
"Newcomers who invest nothing actually cost the platform substantially, in account creation fees and delegated power."
I wasn't clear, and I should have been. When I said "invest nothing", I also meant the time required to create "quality content". Which, admittedly, most users do not produce. There are many users who have never produced a piece of quality content and that have generated less in total rewards than it cost Stinc/the blockchain to create their accounts.
Those are the ones I mean. The botnets, the sock puppets, the plagiarizers, most of /created (aka /new).
Minnows who create content that garners more rewards (un-botted) than their account cost to create are the bomb, and eventually they turn into dolphins which turn into whales.
There are a lot of posts by people that I have little interest in. However, just cuz I don't find it thrilling doesn't mean that pics of Kim Kardashian aren't 'quality content'.
Botnets, sock puppets, and the like, can all be damned, as far as I'm concerned. I do not equate such malicious actors with folks that post stuff I have no interest in, or vehemently disagree with.
I think you're touching on a serious point that no one wants to clarify properly. Investors in steem should not be entitled to anything but the steem they purchased. In the event it goes up in value, they win.
At the moment, though, they get to endlessly drain the rewards pool for themselves which makes no sense.
It is the witnesses who deserve compensation as they are essentially keeping the blockchain running.
I hope you'll consider joining the conversation in the comments of my newest post on these issues. We really need to highlight these problems for anything to change.
Maybe I am wrong, but I belive the value of steem is a consequence of the potential percieved and/or realized by steemit and other(?) steem plataforms. That's what makes people buy steem, the future potential of all this, not the short-time reward they can make upvoting themselves.
That being true, newcomers actually are showing there is real potential for steemit to reach mass adoption and without it -
being a small club of investors - steem worth close-to-nothing unless those investors are willing to invest more and/or never cashout.
For that reason, I completly disagree with your perception of newcomers as cost and I belive that if most whales see things the same way you, steem is not landing anywhere close to the moon and I will probably lose those 500 usd I invested in steem potential.
Hey, I just want to clarify some confusion, and say that I totally agree with you.
Newcomers being a cost is fact. They cost money in account creation and delegation, I've seen the numbers.
However, I was referring to these ones:
"Newcomers who invest nothing actually cost the platform substantially, in account creation fees and delegated power."
I wasn't clear, and I should have been. When I said "invest nothing", I also meant the time required to create "quality content". Which, admittedly, most users do not produce. There are many users who have never produced a piece of quality content and that have generated less in total rewards than it cost Stinc/the blockchain to create their accounts.
Those are the ones I mean. The botnets, the sock puppets, the plagiarizers, most of /created (aka /new).
Minnows who create content that garners more rewards (un-botted) than their account cost to create are the bomb, and eventually they turn into dolphins which turn into whales.
So we agree that steemit value depends on it's potential adoption and it depends on minnows and new users enjoying the plataform and use it - not botnets, not sock puppets or plagiarizers - real users/minnows who produce content want to make steemit a usefull tool for themselves and others.
What is happening is that exactly those "target audience" are the guys who are complaining about the reward system, like this post. Not the botnets, who are actually exploiting the current model. Not power users, who are able to understand and use some tools in their favor or famous youtubers who get some support from whales.
I had a few talks about the subject and read many posts about it. Can't see steemit solving this issue on a short term. Maybe famous youtubers can be enought to bring people here, but why would they buy steem? Why would they even make an account? Maybe a few super fans...
Anyway, I may be totally wrong about this, but after seeing real potential active users leaving steemit because of the reward system and after reading the position of relevant people here, I am not confident steemit will endure.
Game theory helps us understand the choices people make, and the perspective on that matter is also not very good.
For those reasons, I decide to power down all my SP for now and change it back in BTC on the next weeks. I will keep an eye on steemit and maybe come back when it looks like a good investment again.
Thanks for the talk!
" I will keep an eye on steemit and maybe come back when it looks like a good investment again."
That will mean the price is substantially higher than it is now. Steem looks like it's in a slump now, maybe undervalued. I'm loathe to sell at this time.
I think most of the minnows complaining about rewards overestimate what they contribute. I quickly made over $1000 in rewards here with no initial investment. I had several posts over $300 in my first week when I had only delegated SP from Steemit.
People think if they work hard on one or two posts and aren't making bucks, it's time to give up. This is a marathon, not a spring.
In a few words: Steem is over a year and still not catching up. It's hard to convince people to post here because they have no chance in climbing up this hill. And it includes you 2.
Really? Cause I've been climbing up this hill pretty steadily by putting in the work of forging bonds with the people on here and posting consistently good original material. And yes, it has been catching up. It's a slow process that's set to happen over the course of years, but SP is and will continue to diffuse across more users as time goes on. Again, it's in the white paper. The more people receiving curation/author rewards, the less rewards end up in the pocket of whales. This has been accelerated with the linear rewards curve established in Hardfork 19, as the overall weight of whale accounts has decreased.
I have had zero difficulty in explaining the situation to people on here regarding rewards, as it's a matter of perspective. Just like in the real world, if you don't have any social currency (reputation, not just a rep score), no one's going to know who you are. You have to market yourself. It takes time, and it takes effort, but if I can do it, take a break for a few months to finish a novel, and pick right back up and gain an average of 12 users a day since I've been back, anyone can.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. This is social jealousy. Those without the clout or the following, or the extreme writing skill to get to trending without it, are always looking for ways to try to change the system for the better.
I honestly think that most of the minnows here are basically Steemit-communists. They all want to "seize the means of production" because it's unfair that "he makes more than me after investing $10,000s"
That's exactly what it is. To quote the other guy responding to me:
As if having a shit ton of money to invest just magically happens to people. Nope, no way hard work and effort ever factored into that. Risk assessment and leveraging your assets to get on the cutting edge? Nonsense. It's all luck.
Can't stand that shit.
Nice one; don't get me started...
You know the platform better than me; so it's good to have your perspective. Thankyou.
Is changing the system for the better supposed to be a bad thing?
What were you expecting, an An-cap circle jerk? The vast majority of people detest anarcho-capitalism and prefer socialism. Look at reddit, /r/socialsim has around 100,000 subscribers, /r/anarchocapitalsm has around 1,500 subscribers.
If this site takes off, that's what you can expect. If it doesn't make the distribution system fairer though, it won't take off and users will abandon the site. Less people will upvote your posts and your payouts will decrease. Also, the value of steem will drop.
That was poorly phrased on my part. I was implying "for the better" simply means whatever benefits them more.
The whole point is there isn't agreement on what "for the better" is. Sorry about that.
It's disingenuous of you to compare Socialism and An-Cap. We're talking straight capitalism here, control of one's own assets. You want to compare the numbers of capitalists and socialists in the US, totally inverting your numerical advantage?
Socialism is a garbage ideal for those with garbage logic. Like Communism, it only works in theory until you run out of other people's money (tm), and Steemit is designed to be diametrically opposed to it.
"Less people will upvote your posts and your payouts will decrease. Also, the value of steem will drop."
If you haven't already noticed that the number of your votes is almost irrelevant, because 1 whale is worth 10,000 minnows, then I don't know what to tell you. Losing a bunch of minnow votes really doesn't mean anything. Minnows, if they aren't creating quality content, are a drain on the platform.
If you have data to prove that the value of an asset will drop if you can't get it into the hands of those with no net worth, I'd love to see it.
PS - Still loving the name.
Just look at what happened to digg when it became dominated by a handful of power users.
Well, I don't have any data to show you but I do belive the value of a social plataform depends heavly on how many people want to use it.
Think about it: there is no ads, no value creation besides the content posted which is not sold to anyone. So, where the actual value comes from? Like any other currency, from the adoptions and trade utility. Both will not grow if the reward system still the way it is. And I know it because all those minnows trying to change this reward system is the only data I have to think about steemit, maybe not enought to convince you, but still something you should consider.
If things stay the way they are, steemit will soon become a small and valueless plataform for early adopters/investors scratch each others back. That's the right time for steemit to learn and improve or resist and probably die. That's the main reason I am not willing to invest more than the 500 usd I alredy invested on steemit.
Followed you based on your comments in this thread. I'm a minnow. I'm investing a lot of time and effort to provide good content (well i hope it's classed as "good) on here. That's all i intend to do. Hopefully, over time, my investment (although not liquid like yours) will reward myself and others on here.
If you read this post, you would see that nothing changed from last year https://steemit.com/steemit/@bless/creating-a-more-secure-fair-and-decentralized-steemit-1-2017725t17584872z
@anarcho-andrei The speed of the distribution will change depending on the inflation rate of steem (new coins issued to authors and curators) and on the behave of whales. If inflation is low and whales and selfish, the distribution may not be enought to keep new users comming to the plataform and everyone will hurt.
It's even harder when you think of other languages and without them steem will never grow global. We have good people on steem trying to make national projects, like @camoes for portuguese, but it's almost impossible to make relevant money writing in other language besides english. So, if steem is to really go global and became what it is suposed to, the distribution speed should increase. You are right, it's better after HF19, but maybe not fast enought yet.
And it's not really about social capital. A famous brazillian youtuber could come here with hundreds or thousands of fans and still would be a minnow since very few people in Brazil have any SP to vote for him. Today, it's more like a plutocracy + aristocratic system where you have to either put thousands of dolars or be connected to the nobility class to become relevant. What you are saying is that connecting to the nobility is possible and I agree, but people are saying that maybe it's not the best thing to do with this plataform.
Everyone belives on the concept, but people have different expectations. Let's keep discussing until we find a way to make everyone happy and rich. =)
Cheers!
"Let's keep discussing until we find a way to make everyone happy and rich. =)"
We don't want this. Most of the content creators on here create garbage. They deserve the nothing they get.
I guess they are posting (not even creating) garbage because that's the best cost-benefit choise if someone wants to maximize rewards.
I wrote a fairly good content 10 days ago, took me 3 hours of research and writing plus review and linking in facebook and twitter. I had almost 100 views and 10 upvotes, made 50 cents.
Two days after that, as a test, I postes a youtube video of a song that I like, absolutly no maketing or anything involved and got 15 views and 1 dólar reward.
So, if my goal was to maximize my reawards, the best option would be to just post tons of garbage stuff hoping I can get somone to vote on them or invest time and energy on a single quality post? People say that making a quality post will get you more followers and on the long tun will be better, but I belive there is a problem in the way things are done now.
One option would be to limit the dayly posts by rep, so the quality content wouldn't be lost amont tons of garbage.
"I wrote a fairly good content 10 days ago, took me 3 hours of research and writing plus review and linking in facebook and twitter. I had almost 100 views and 10 upvotes, made 50 cents.
Two days after that, as a test, I postes a youtube video of a song that I like, absolutly no maketing or anything involved and got 15 views and 1 dólar reward."
I think, unfortunately, you have effectively summarized why many of us have felt Social Media is fucking stupid for a very long time. This exact same stuff regularly happens to me, or I release two very similar-in-quality posts and one makes 7 cents while another makes $300. Unfortunately, as I believe it says in the white paper, Steemit is kind of a lottery. You aren't rewarded on a fair, regular basis (unless you buy a ton of stake to reward yourself). All you can do is release the best content and hope for the best.
You can release garbage content, and because you get more "lottery tickets" that way, the chance of someone with some stake seeing it is higher. However, that is a short-term strategy that doesn't create followers.
The only long-term-guaranteed strategy is blood, sweat and tears. I have been writing for decades and even with a lot of content pre-brainstormed, regular quality production is difficult and often unrewarded.
Steemit isn't a magic money machine...unless we go to the moon and you are Hodl'ing, I guess.
Perhaps it is because the system incentivizes this type of behavior. We need a valid solution to this.
I could not have less respect for that attitude.
Maybe you find @sweetsssj's posts riveting, and any number of others of little value. However, there are people that have not had your opportunities to attain liquid assets, through no fault of their own, and that does not make them less than human.
The value of Steem is derived from Steemit. Absent Steemit, your investment in Steem will prove unrewarding, and the masses of posters of 'useless' content are all that stands between you and a bad investment.
Heh, so, someone commented on this string and it came up in my reply feed, so I'll take this chance to reply again:
I think we're talking past each other here.
If you take a look at "New" right now, you'll see what I mean about most posts being garbage. 4 of the 7 posts in "New" when I wrote this were single pictures of food that may well have been plagiarism.
This is garbage content. That's all I mean.
"However, there are people that have not had your opportunities to attain liquid assets, through no fault of their own, and that does not make them less than human."
I don't think I implied this anywhere. I certainly didn't state it.
"and the masses of posters of 'useless' content are all that stands between you and a bad investment."
I don't think those masses of garbage content stand between Steemit crashing at all. It's the 10% of users with quality content, the top 1000 authors....they are what make Steemit valuable.
Not the 299000 accounts full of upvoting-nogonaoo bots.
LOL
I do take your points, particularly regarding botnets. But, and I wish to say this with complete respect, those 'garbage posts' are gonna be Steemit's bread and butter. Not the Single Malt and Champagne, but the bulk of the posts people are able to make that intercourse with their social circle.
As such, I don't have a problem with that. I'm not gonna follow folks that post pics of Kim Kardashian's butt, but I consider such posts literally sacred compared to AI written posts, botnets, etc.. Actual people hold them to be valuable, which gives them value.
While there may be little substantive difference between such posts and posts that are simply vehicles for votebots and vote buying schemes, there is a qualitative difference, and it's important. Most people aren't gonna write work that Hemingway did, and Steemit needs to be their social network too.
That it is will make the top content more valuable, not the only valuable content.
Without the 'masses' Steemit will fail. Fakebook will win, because the masses are recognized as integral to it's success. I bow to necessity in the fight to destroy Fakebook. Doesn't mean I'm gonna post pics of Nascar...
I apologize for any outrage I may have expressed in a semi-ad hominem manner. You are correct that stating that posts are 'garbage' doesn't state that the posters are.
Hi, you may be interested in joining the discussion on my recent post on Steemit's issues.
Let's all work together through building awareness of these problems to find a good solution.
Well, your transaction history tell a different story. It shows that you've been buying lot's of steem rather than earning it. It shows that you have 1,479.318 STEEM yourself and people have delegated 9,048.881 STEEM to you - probably because you purchased it off a whale. It also shows that you've been buying upvotes.
You've simply used your wealth to buy yourself a better position. How on earth is that fair to those who don't have the wealth to buy themselves influential positions?
It's my earnings. I can use them in whatever fashion I want to. As for the delegated SP, I purchased that with the earnings I gathered from all the posts I've made previous to now, and I purchased it to expand my ability to curate. So you can shove your self-righteousness. You know how I earned enough SP to power down into Steem so I could purchase wider curating power in the first place? Good original content and building relationships with people.
I earned where I'm at and what I'm doing. I've put forth a year's worth of effort to build my position. I'm all for charity; I've delegated to curation bots I believe in run by people I know and trust. I have sat on the introduceyourself tag and greeted hundreds of new Steemians and answered tons of questions on Steemit.chat and Discord to help new users out. What I will never support is the notion that this should be automatic or a feature. No one deserves something just for showing up.
Of course you can do whatever you want with your steem, that doesn't mean the system is fair.
How stupid do you think people are? You powered down your SP into steem in order to use that steem to purchase 10x more SP? Sure mate, that happened.
I'm not being self-righteous, I merely pointing out the recorded facts.
As your transaction history shows, you've clearly bought your position. I'm not saying that you haven't made good posts or been helpful, I'm merely stating a recorded and undeniable fact. You can try to deny it as much as you want but it's right there in your transaction history.
Likewise, no one deserves anything just for being wealthy enough to be able to buy themselves a nice position.
If you looked at my transaction history, you'd see me powering down the SP I've earned over the course of a year in order to do this. Why don't you look again?
Also, what were those transfers in your transaction history from blocktrades?
Why would I need to look over it again? You just said that you powered down your SP in order to purchase SP? On what planet does that make any sense? It ain't fucking this one that's for sure.
Oh wait, I know exactly what those transfers are. You trying to buy your position.
https://steemit.com/steem/@steempower/how-to-use-blocktrades
Yes, that's me trying to buy my way higher up the ladder. Unlike you, I'm not going to deny that fact and I'm not going to try to convince people that I earned that SP when I so very clearly bought it and din't earn it in any way, shape or form. I didn't even earn the money I used to buy that SP, I made it from mining altcoins with my GPU.
This is exactly the issue I've pointed out in my recent post.
It'd be great if you could join that discussion as well to help highlight this problem further.
Show data please.
Show me a current chart of the one I posted earlier, in reply to another comment. I have asked @arcange for a new, post HF19 chart, but receive no answer.
Social media needs to be useful to everybody, not just salespeople. While people that market themselves successfully can succeed in business, ordinary people just posting the stuff they post are the market for Steemit. This isn't supposed to be a marketing platform, but a social media site.
The rewards, as you point out, increase as folks gain followers. But, as long as bots, collusion, and punitive flagging exist, those rewards are going to continue to be concentrated in the accounts that 'game' Steemit for rewards, rather than to post ordinary content on social media.
This is not what the white paper lays out. Indeed, the white paper says
Being equal in VP does not mean we'd end up with Kim Kardashian ASSets being the highest paid posts (a race to the bottom... get it?), but rather that the content that more people found worth a vote would be valued most.
A good way to examine what that would produce is to follow @screenname, who tracks posts that are undervalued, when the number of votes is compared to earnings. No ASSets end up on that list.
Neither does @sweetsssj. Dunno why exactly @dan started flagging her, but speculation I have heard is that the drain on the rewards pool was his target.
The problem of inequity in rewards certainly does exist, and just saying it doesn't won't make the content creators that are angry about stay and post more good content.