A while back when it was obvious that Steemit was losing users hand over fist, I got talking to a friend who liked posting memes on Facebook. The key point was that much of the popularity of sites like Facebook and Twitter is based upon users being able to just share links and memes without actually writing anything themselves.
Can you just repost memes on Steemit was a question of interest so as an experiment I helped set up a new account for posting memes. The account got blacklisted for plagiarism and flagged to oblivion. No warnings, no explanation, just first line of control being down-voting and blacklisting.
OK, so the answer was clearly no, posting memes on Steemit was verboten. And the unspoken subtext was that Steemit was a closed circle not interested in on-boarding new users.
So that friend gave up on Steemit and started posting memes on a new site called Gab. You may have heard of it recently, it's been getting a lot of attention for getting over a million new users in a day!
(Like all the best memes, this meme is viral - the source is the internet...)
Forward to Hive in the present time. “We are going to onboard new users by providing new front ends that are more like Twitter where you can do shitposts”
As a Hive investor I’m thinking “that sounds like a good idea” - but does it work? - let’s try that meme experiment again. So I set up a new account and post some memes on D-Buzz and Memehub.
And what happens? - I get flagged for plagiarism, and threatened with being blacklisted. Clearly there are unwritten rules here that I’m violating. But these were not explained, and after more than four years on Steemit and Hive I am unclear about them.
Is it NOT OK to copy and post memes on D-Buzz or Memehub? If so, what is the point of these new front ends? I am not the only long term Hive blogger who is totally confused about all this. I’m doing this experiment because I don’t have a clue. What would a person new to Hive make of all this (if they ever managed to create a new account in the first place). To see how to much easier setting up a new account can be, try joining Flote. https://flote.app/