Today I visited my medium account after literally months of not opening it, to me it actually doesn't make sense anymore to keep writing on other social platforms but I wanted to compare my page views on Medium with the actual engagement I have received from the steemit community, however before I could start my research I came across an article titled:
"Steemit — An Incentivized Social Media Platform or a Scam?"
That sure caught my attention, I decided to take a closer look to what this guy had to say and when I say this guy I mean an Information Technology Specialist & co-founder of www.pctechauthority.com, so I thought to myself: "oh, maybe he knows what he is talking about"...boy was I wrong
After reading the article I was quite shocked, I thought for a few minutes whether to reply to him or not, I just wasn't sure if it was worth my effort (getting up, turning on the computer, explaining things step by step, etc), but I just could not resist that itch on my fingers....."arrghhh fuck it!"
So here is my reply, I think I was quite polite and just stated proven facts to him, I give him the benefit of a doubt because maybe he just doesn't understand steemit....why on earth will he still be writing on medium if he did right?
Internet expert: The problem is, such a system that relies on thumbs up metrics to gage the worthiness and overall value of content is a system that’s likely easy to game.
Me: To get an account you either need to have a reddit or facebook account or you need to mine one, moreover only votes with some “steem power” will influence the actual payout so spam accounts are worthless
Internet expert: How does a platform that has no source of revenue of other than investors afford to pay out millions of dollars to its members when there’s no money coming in?
Me: In bitcoin miners produce blocks which gives them rewards, in steem miners and witnesses redirect part of the rewards to posters and voters…you can read more about this on steem whitepaper
Internet expert: ... magically paying people to blog
Me (thinking): hehe I am not even gonna reply to this, I will just highlight it for the Lulz
Internet expert: One has to wonder if some of these profiles are merely sock puppet accounts formed to create the illusion of easy money.
Me (starting to get rather angry now): There are several examples of normal people who have made money on steemit, being one of them, me being another…
, etc .. etc.. feel free to check them all out at steemit. You can also look at all the introduceyouself posts, they cant all be fake, can they!?..
Internet expert: the platform itself can’t seem to explain how it earns its revenue or where it actually comes from
Me (oh, this again eh?): It is explained on the white-paper but I agree is hard for non-crypto people to understand it… if you believe this is “magic” money then the rewards of bitcoin miners is also “magic” money because it is basically the same thing. There are also plenty of posts of people who sold their Steem Dollars and Steem for bitcoin and then used the money to go on holidays.. buy laptops…etc
Internet expert: [digital currencies blah blah blah].....and often manage to make investors money disappear when they do.
Me: You do not need to invest any money at all to make money on steemit, you just need to write and vote… so there is no money to be lost
Internet expert: Let’s face it, many have already had their Bitcoin wallets get burned, and financial institutions appear to be treading with caution when it comes to digital currencies as a whole.
Me: There was a hack recently…. steemit recovered all the accounts and re-funded the money to people who lost their private keys.
So maybe I will do my reach comparison between Medium and Steemit some other day, but I just couldn't leave that uninformed article unresponded!