The following views and expressions are mine and mine alone , and are nobody else’s , but they should be and probably are.
Ever since the word timeshare became synonymous with the word Boondoggle , and pyramid schemes became — multi level marketing , direct chain selling , affiliate marketing, or the endless chain recruitment plan it really is . Lets travel back to 4th grade and look at Steemit and compare it and contrast it to the other “ peer supported earning ideas “.
Just like Mary Kay, Herbalife and a bunch of others instead of a downline you have a system like Reddit except instead of earning useless karma points, your Steem can actually be turned into Crypto. Given that content and curation should matter right ? Wrong . Here is what I see the most .
Q. But some people make money why can’t I ?
A. Because you are the ones who made PT Barnum rich Depending on what you mean by “money”. Some people will tell you there are people making thousands of dollars from writing on the site. But the trick to making any money is more than just writing good content you can be the next Quentin Tarantino for all people know but You have to be SEEN. How can people give you upvotes if they never see your content? In my experience so far, being seen is damn near impossible.
Q - But what is the curation and pay structure
This is where things get a little confusing. On Steemit there is Steem, Steem Power, and Steam dollars (SBD). Steem are tokens that can be turned into Steem Power or Steam Dollars. Steem dollars are the currency that can be transferred to others on the site or exchanged for Bitcoin on a digital currency exchange. Then you have Steem Power, which is how much influence you have on the site. People with more influence make more money when they post and their votes are also worth more. Those with the most Steem Power are called “whales” and a lot of people tend to suck up to them hoping they’ll pay attention and upvote their posts. People that don’t have a lot of Steem Power are called minnows and people that fall in the middle are dolphins. This unevenness of voting weight means that while a minnow might be able to destroy $0.10 of a whale’s earnings, that whale could totally demonetise a week’s worth of a minnow’s posts without even breaking a sweat. A whale can easily crush the reputation of a minnow through down-voting, too. Other than begging other powerful accounts for help, they have no recourse because you can’t alter the reputation of those higher than yourself.
In real life terms think of your Steemit Blog as a shopfront where people pay to read your articles, and it takes on a face that a even a 1951 housewife from Queens can understand. Imagine; a racketeer comes in trashes your shop’s signage, steals your earnings and tells the community that you sell ciggarettes to 9 year olds. Then tells the people they better agree or they are next . Sure, some people are wrong immoral or unethical but most ended up iutnof business because just like the racketeer they did not stay on the good side of the powerful but sometimes less than moral people.
I recently joined a Facebook group about Steem and found that it is nothing more than a voting ring made to upvote members posts or have a whale sink even a Steven King Novel to an ocean trench. So in light of that I came up with some ideas.
No downvoting. Downvote creates raging and wars. It creates negative behavior. Downvotes are the reason why Steem is a high-school-like environment. Downvotes are not necessary - youtube, facebook have no downvoting. "Best" articles are the ones with more upvotes;
You earn what was donated to you - nothing less, nothing more; If people like your article or comment, they upvote with their own money - the sum of donated money goes directly to the author. People, community, whales or whatever should not have the power to steal money;
No power delegation. Power delegation only serves to create tribes.
I am only a 26 year old girl living in New York who plans weddings for a living. If I can see this and come up with some viable solutions , I’m pretty sure some of the rest of you can too. Any attempt to make a change starts with the decision to try.
Thanks for your time ....
Sierra “ if there’s a monster in a guys pants I can make it do a naughty dance “ Hallal
