In the investing world, most self help articles and introduction to investment books start out with pay yourself first philosophies and invest in yourself, thus your future. I have begun advising content creators on centralized platforms to invest in themselves by building a position on the Steemit platform, as an investment in their future as content producers and influencers.
We are living in turbulent times for platforms and “influencers” on those platforms. This last year we have seen a restructuring of the payout to content producers on many centralized platforms.
In addition we have seen bans, censorship and other forms of removing these “influencers” from these centralized platforms.
The writing is on the wall and the explanation is simple. These influencers may have spent a lot of time, sweat and blood building up their followings. But the owners of the platforms control how much they get paid and whether they are on the platform at all.
This overnight transformation from rich influencers to poor influencers or even the more extreme change of waking up to find you have been banned is no longer theoretical, it is happening frequently.
I for one see this situation as both a problem and an opportunity.
It’s a problem if you don’t prepare a Plan B, it’s an opportunity if it motivates you as a content producer to seek out different platforms and even consider buying your place on a platform, so you can’t be deplatformized and your income will be more secure.
I have been advertising this angle on Twitter and soon YouTube, as long as the videos stay up.
I see the writing on the wall, the question is How do we protect ourselves from being deplatformized on centralized social media platforms? The answer I believe is a move to decentralized platforms.
The struggle for survival has begun.