I was slightly alarmed by the piece published in Vice Magazine as I have a few reservations of my own. Last week I had encouraged several colleagues (all of whom are journalists working in traditional media) to check out Steemit and all declined to join while mentioning several of the reasons raised in the Vice piece. A brief excerpt:
"But as with any new cryptocurrency, there are key questions over stability, sustainability, and underlying motivation. As it stands, the bulk of the site is made up of quickly-written, poorly-researched content, some of which is remunerated into the thousands of dollars. At the same time, critics have raised concerns over both the distribution of the currency and the business model of the platform, questioning the huge sums accrued by early adopters and in some cases alleging a scam dependent on new investment to remain afloat.....a glance at the homepage shows that a lot of popular content tends towards the amateurish and introspective: posts written about Steemit do disproportionately well, leading to an endlessly introspective cycle of content discussing the platform itself; another breakout topic is “introduce yourself,” where high scoring posts tend overwhelmingly to be written by either physically attractive women or professionally successful men."
Here is the link:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/steemit-is-like-reddit-but-where-upvotes-equal-a-cryptocurrency-payout
What do others think of some of the points raised in the article?