I have a question for those who are planning to run multiple platforms as they arrive in the coming months and years. How many times is it okay to get paid for the same content? This is quite a serious question really, even if just looking at Steemit.
One thing that is often commented upon at Steemit is the 7 day payout window (it used to be 30) whereas on other platforms like YouTube, it is mostly unlimited. It is also common practice that accounts will have a presence on multiple platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. However, these do come with differences to places like Steemit where the payment not only comes out of a public pool but, it is possible to pay yourself from it. This alone is going to raise many questions isn't it?
But, let's say that a whale who has a presence on Steemit bought a fair bit of EOS at 50 cents, uses ONO and whatever else will be attached, posts the same content across all and self-votes, that is going to be a massive amount of monetization that the author can choose themselves isn't it? I don't know how all the platforms will work of course but even without self-voting, the chances for large amounts on the same content is very high.
I may not like people advertising other platforms here but, I do understand why they are doing it as essentially they will be able to take some of their supporters over with them and get their accounts moving without having to ever start from zero, like most others. It would also mean that people can vote on the same article twice or more on various platforms. It seems likely that the circle-jerks are going to be cross-platform and therefore, the current difficulty of governance is going to be near impossible.
I have been thinking about this for myself from a content perspective too as I would likely be classed as someone who produces a lot of content daily. The interesting thing with a lot of what I write is that it can be read at anytime with minimal effort required to change it for suitability for different audiences. I fashioned a lot of it without being bound to a time frame in case Steemit ever found a way to have a continual payout window but, it will work similarly if I chose to post across various interfaces also. I am not saying that every piece I write is gold but, I do think that some are pretty good and creative and assume there will be a niche at just about every platform.
But, this goes beyond just the content in my thinking as if the same people with the know-how to buy in on content sites are appearing on all with heavy investment, the same faces and therefore, same content is going to be appearing at all sites. This low content diversity carries risks for all platforms as does having low diversity of people at the top. Again, each platform is going to behave differently but, I don't yet know how to different they will be considering their starting points.
This is going to take bots to all new levels of monetization also as the operators will be able to distribute content easily to many platforms which means, those that are already here will spread out but, those that start on the new platforms will spread into Steem. It is going to open up a whole new circle of Spam hell.
I don't know how all of this is going to pan out but I think we can all agree that when there is money involved, every possible loophole, trick, scam and play are going to be attempted and we can see how complex it gets just here. What happens when there are several directly monetized platforms operating on top of each other with the same people being the first ones to spread into the next latest and greatest?
Even though this is the way things have to go and there is so much potential for so many, it is going to create a very big mess and it runs the risk of developing massive inequalities between users very fast, no matter when they decide to adopt the platform. I am just hoping it all operates better and with advantages for many more than the world we have today.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]