Steem and Stars

Resistance to change is resistance to progress. Progress may be, philosophically speaking, futile. The ups and downs of the human experience remain fundamentally unchanged… yet… what else is there to do with our collective consciousness?…. but to pursue the ideal… and see where it takes us.

HF20 was rough but I think it’s clear that Steem is booming. The Steem blockchain has inspired similar sites like Smoke.io and Weku, there are probably others and many more to come.
I dare say that even if similar sites are able innovate to the point of surpassing the Steem blockchain in concept or functionality, Steem will remain an enduring and defining stalwart in emerging area of tokenized blockchain based social media.

However objectionable the idea of corporations and celebrities getting involved and making use of a platform that has so much to offer humanity, there is an undeniable inevitability. So far, the community has impressed me with a seeming dedication to inclusiveness and progress at whatever cost is necessary. There is no reason to think that there is any thing can ever be taken away from the community by maintaining that drive.
Many crypto related projects and companies already have an 'official presence' on Steem. Two days ago, Coingecko announced its presenceon Steem with a fair investment in Steem Power. Far from diluting the reward pool and robbing long time dedicated users of votes corporate Steem accounts are more likely to offer more than they take in Steem economics. The benefit for them is marketing. The promotion of their established product or service will most likely take precedence over any incidental income earned from upvotes. Steem provides an excellent platform that companies can use to reward customers for loyalty, interaction and involvement. They can get feedback, run competitions as well as make announcements just as any other social media but with all the reality of rewarding participation with actual currency. Millions of new users will be brought to the platform looking to benefit from the rewards offered. Many of these users will look around at other stuff and begin making use of all the other aspects of Steem; reading blogs, uploading photos etc. The end result is growth. More investment, more liquidity, higher adoption and usage.

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Already as Steem develops and establishes its unique community culture, popularity becomes an inescapable and defining factor. As a social platform there is no escaping the manifestations of our human social behaviours. There will be celebrities. There already are individuals carving out a niche of dedicated Steem followers. For similar reasons that, corporate entities might want to get involved in the social blockchain phenomena, so might celebrities from outside media: marketing. In the early days of Twitter no-one imagined that celebrities would want to communicate directly with their fans without the use of a publicist. For better or worse even public figures and politicians make use of twitter for official and non-official communication. The Steem blockchain offers a unique avenue to engage fans and followers and reward them for engagement. Society is a global phenomenon, and there is so much ‘room’ in social media for growth. It is the future. The future of humankind will be defined by the development and advancement of our social structures. That is not some incredible statement about things that may be but a fact of human history. As robotics and A.I. are used increasingly to generate economy our social and digital-social lives will only grow in significance...

The growth potential of an inclusive outlook is well demonstrated in the case of YouTube. Originally intended as a place to post personal vlogs or creative output such as music or art, the public quickly saw enormous potential for all sorts of unintended uses such as file sharing. Through various controversies and changing policies YouTube as continued to grow and develop a unique community of content producers in video, music and art, as well as become a hosting platform for mainstream media such as Vevo and Netflix. The mainstream and the user created content exist side by side, neither taking anything away from the other. Visitors are likely to have favourites in both fields. The explosion and continued growth of ‘reality’ content in mainstream media is further indicative of a mutual influence.

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There are some drawbacks to the algorithmically controlled personal user feed of social media platforms. On YouTube videos that already have a high level of popularity tend to get even more exposer due to the fact that statistically more people are likely to appreciate them. As a result, little-known high-quality finds in any particular type or genre tend to get side-lined. Getting it right though, is tricky, but not impossible. Constant development, feedback from users and trail and error can vastly improve current systems. Bots or AI can search for content with advanced parameters. Once again, the possibilities seem endless when I start thinking about it..
There is no reason for my personal feed to become dominated by Coca Cola and Miley Cyrus, unless that’s what I’m looking for. The other content will not disappear. With improvements in curation strategies and more interest specific dapps the development of original and creative content can be encouraged like never before. The ideal of a universally accepted trending page is a myth. It should be completely tailored and subjective to the user’s profile. To limit the growth of the platform so that users won’t have to encounter the new and unexpected is inviting stagnation like a city that discourages investment because they’re not willing to update the infrastructure. The people are left with neither infrastructure nor opportunities.

New dapps being developed to use the Steem blockchain have settings to block irrelevant posts. While things like Actafit, Steepshot or Dtube are great for the blockchain, it is preferable to have them filtered out of blog feeds. This is purely cosmetic and the only the reason that we still have to wade through so much undesired content is that the development and realization of the potential of Steem is still in its infancy. It will come. The value of Steem is in it’s underlying blockchain. Thank you and farewell to Steemit and welcome a new era of specific interfaces that give specific content according to the desires of the user. Only memes, no memes; blog articles or short/'shit' posts; only photos or music; whatever your tastes can co-exist and be accessible to users. New dapp development combined with SMTs mean that there is no end to the potential that open-mindedness in this regard can inspire and unlock.

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There are challenges. We need to promote de-centralization and technological development side by side. As the platform skyrockets, the investors and witnesses will inherit escalating power and responsibility. While the very concept of de-centralization is non-prescriptive, it is descriptively apparent that there are some common ideological threads which form a basis of this community’s consciousness. It’s important for us as users to keep that alive on an individual and personal level.
Witness accounts are becoming increasingly team driven. Recently I cam across a post describing the formation of the Hive account@wise-team which will supersede Hive account@noisy.witness as Steem witness, complete with CEO and onboard dev team. The benefits of a more structured approach with more available resources is undeniable. The more expertise and collaboration we can have at a technical level the better. At a social level though it is the users that have the power and responsibility to prevent abuse. As long as users are pro-active and keep involved, informed and engaged in communication, true decentralization can be achieved and maintained. The Steem blockchain has a distinct advantage over the pioneering ledger system of Bitcoin, which has been largely taken over by mining whales and investors, rendering it effectively at least partially centralized. The advantage is that Steem is a social as well as economic platform and as such, we users are intrinsic to it's very structure. If we can remember this and exercise the resultant rights and accept the responsibilities of our involvement, we can ensure that it will continue to be a source of value to us. Resolute development, transparency and accountability will ensure fairness without the need to adopt some prescriptive ideology, other than a common understanding of the intrinsic value and awesome power that freedom through decentralization allows.