Lately, I feel like I have been harsh on content which is likely due to the knee jerk reaction by many to the idea of funding the worker proposal system. For some clarity, I am a content producer on Steem, it is what I love doing and currently, it is how I grow my account. I understand low rewards, I understand high too. I see it in Steem and have done for a long time already, while most still worry about the fiat values of their accounts. The value will take care of itself as the industry and ecosystem matures, if it matures.
In my last post I posited that the relationships is what has value on social sites, not the content and I think there is a little more I can add in regards to Steem as Steem is uniquely positioned as far as the centralised platforms are concerned - it is not centralised.
As I said in that post, whoever owns the lines of communication dictate behaviour and when there is a near monopoly across a couple of companies, those lines are owned. This means that with the mass data they collect from billions of sources and thousands of factors, they are able to know us much better than we know ourselves. You can argue but, you'd be wrong.
The power of Steem is the return of control of our digital lives even though the data is freely available on the Blockchain. The reason is that at least on Steem, we own the lines of communication and, in a decentralised environment, we are able to have more control over what we see, hear and share.
As said, it is our relationships that hold so much value because it is possible to inject ideas into communities to engage and mobilise them without them being able to trace the source of how or why they began walking that path to begin with. It is communicational entrapment that primes us until we act upon it, brainwashed.
This is much harder to do in a decentralised environment, much harder to control when people are free to act and behave as they choose. Yes, there are consequences to words and actions but they are driven by a much freer market of diversified thought and culture, rather than a centralised and unified authority.
The Steem ecosystem is far from perfect and far from being decentralised enough but, slowly it is shifting. The more people in, the more empowered to be themselves, to take responsibility, be willing to own and become accountable and, the stronger and more useful Steem becomes.
Owning the lines of communication is quite literal on Steem if you consider Steem Power and Resource Credits. It of course goes further though as the more people who are investing themselves in and the more ways they do that, the more utility Steem has as an economy mechanism within the community ecosystem.
Participation in Steem matters and while the content is where most people will look to earn, the community is where that earning will come from as well as the stability of that earning. If there were millions of users and each had some level of Steem, a big individual sell in the market would have little influence, even if Steemit Inc dropped a few million.
The reason is that with a lot of users, Steem has utility and value in and of itself without requiring a conversion to fiat. Own the lines of communication, own the lines of economy.
Do you see the value in this? Do you think about the ramifications of building a community backed economy with known economic parameters instead of a centralised one that can pump and dump whenever their debt needs servicing? Do you see the value of participation?
Your content on Steem has value because the community says it has but, you are much more than your content. You are an information node that parses data through your interactions and in so doing, create transactional volume and strength to the network. The more successfully you develop, the more valuable your content becomes and this is important because while on the centralised platforms your content is valueless, on Steem you not only get to own it, you get to reward and value the content of others.
While development is still needed, it is an ecosystem that can empower participants at all levels to be owners at all levels. There will always be a mixed bag of results but, that doesn't mean that there is no value. Perhaps in time, taking ownership and responsibility for our own actions and consequences will mean that rather than having our relationships polarised and weaponised for the gains of a few, we will recognise and eventually satisfy the needs of many. To do that, we need to own it.
Own the lines, own the communication, own the community.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
(posted from phone)