It's amazing that when people who have long championed the concept of decentralised social networks actually get one they cling to their old beliefs and refuse to recognise it. I used to watch mad bitcoins and the bitcoin group up until about a year ago but lost interest because they refuse to move with the times.
Bitcoin maximalists seem to think all new applications should be done with bitcoin which is like saying we should use gold for all economic activity and transactions. Satoshi made bitcoin to be like gold and it is doing it's job well, that doesn't mean we cannot have other currencies and commodities that do other things.
The cries about steemit are that it is 'unsustainable', 'a ponzi' or a 'pyramid scheme', purely because steemit is delivering real value to its users as crypto is supposed to do right? Please tell me what ponzi scheme does not ask for money from people? Steemit requires no initial investment and for that reason does not fall into the ponzi, pyramid categories, they are literally trying to come up with new definitions to satisfy their suspicions. When one considers that facebook earned $3.69 billion on $17.93 billion in revenue in 2015 it does not seem strange that users of a successful new decentralised social platform may expect to see large payouts from their content, which is all facebook is, our content.
I expected better from Theo and Thomas from the bitcoin show who seem like reasonable guys and both have steemit accounts but I feel they are under pressure from the entrenched crypto players in the space. I realise that there have been many altcoin scams and bitcoiners have every reason to be skeptical, however I have seen these guys endorse various altcoins over time that have proved to be disappointing so why the steem hate?
A quick look at this thread on bitcointalk shows widespread ignorance and envy regarding steemit, we must be doing something right!
Steemit section starts at 39:08