Those of you who know me, and pay attention, know that I occasionally write analysis and opinion pieces for a non-mainstream and politically unaligned news site: Independent Australia.( Maybe slightly more than occasionally - published 10 articles there last year - full list here).
Anyway, they recently agreed to run my piece on steemit. For the record, that title is not the one I suggested - other writers will understand.
I don’t expect that everyone is going to be happy with what I’ve had to say in this article. Yes, I did have to radically simplify the technical details for the sake of the length of the article. My brief survey of news stories on steemit and steem is that this is pretty common, and that mine actually gives more detail than most - with the possible exception being 
When I post something on my Steemit blog, it’s written into Steem blockchain. People vote on it (known as "curation") and, after a week, I get a cryptocurrency reward based on how much I’ve been up-voted. Post rewards can reach hundreds of dollars, but most blog entries will earn no more than a few dollars. As more accounts vote for my posts, my reputation – which is supposed to indicate my overall trustworthiness – rises.
It’s also true that I focussed on the economic and philosophical issues that are (in my opinion) not entirely positive. I think it’s possible that I’m going to get a bit of heat and/or hate for this. I mean, it might sound good to some potential investors to say:
Paid up-voting means that anyone with sufficient cash can make it to the top of the trending page, regardless of the quality of their work.
But that’s not what potential smaller users necessarily want to hear. Nor do I think people will be thrilled to bits to see this:
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.
Some people will disagree with my assessment of the situation. Others might agree, but feel that we shouldn’t air our dirty laundry in public. To people in either group: if this is how you feel, write your own op-ed on why the stake-weighted voting system isn’t inherently flawed, or how bidbots won’t destroy the Steem ecosystem, or how our trending page is exactly what your average Facebook user does actually want to see.
You might not like what I wrote, but it’s honest - and honesty is important. I do actually really like steemit, and the vast bulk of the people I’ve met here - sometimes despite our ideological differences. Believe it or not, I’m saying those things because I want steemit to succeed; I’m not convinced that it can ever reach its potential, even with 
I’ll be interested to see if this post gets any traction. It would be nice to see this get some organic interest and upvotes, but, on principle, I won’t boost it with anything I have to pay for.
If you want to read the full article, it’s available here. You should know that I will only get paid for this (by the publisher at least) if I get over a certain threshold of unique clicks. So if you could visit the article, even if it’s just to leave a comment to tell me that I’m full of crap, I’d be very grateful. Resteems are deeply appreciated, as are any efforts to share this via other social media if you still use it.
As always, thanks for reading.
Image source: https://steemit.com/ (Where else?)
Custom footer by
