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Problem #1: Steemit users have no control over their personal safety and whom they choose to associate with or not associate with.
How It Has Been Handled So Far:
The reputation system has been a good band-aid approach with decreasing the visibility of posts from abusive users, but it has not truly solved the problem.
The overwhelming response so far has been total disregard of users’ personal safety.
The one email I did receive had an interrogating tone and it contained a particularly insensitive and ridiculous question, “Do you keep responding to his messages?” One look at my history would reveal that I have ignored this user for months and do not have any engagement whatsoever with him. The last sentence was particularly insensitive with promises to “look into it” and also, “It may violate our privacy agreement.” Basically, the contents of the email response were disregard, insensitivity and inaction, thereby communicating to me that the developers have no real interest in my safety and peace of mind.
Examples: One user has received repeated rape threats, going back over a month.
Many other users have received ongoing harassment. I have been doxxed twice now on Steemit by a mentally unstable user that I am unable to disconnect from. Here’s a definition of doxing: “Doxing may be carried out for various reasons, including to aid law enforcement, business analysis, extortion, coercion, harassment, online shaming, and vigilante justice.”
Negative Effects of Steemit.com’s Inaction Regarding User Safety: Mass fleeing from the site. Lack of trust in both the developers and inherent design structure of Steemit. There was no compassion built into the code.
Solution: Synereo, the newest decentralized social media platform has already solved this problem by their intelligently designed social structure which is implemented with safety and privacy built into their model.
From Synereo: “The privacy of your communications and contacts is baked into the structure of the network.”
Start watching this video from 4:05.
Synereo works in this manner:
One user requests to become connected to another via a notification system. The user who receives the invitation can either accept or reject the invitation. Synereo has built-in introduction protocol that removes the problem of harassment and unwanted contact. Synereo follows the same organic social rules that govern real-life social interaction, with users ultimately being in control of who they associate with. The whole censorship thing is thrown out the window because social groups form organically and are voluntary in nature. Synereo has been designed with normal, social humans in mind who value their own personal safety and ability to control their own social life.
Metaphors:
Steemit is like being at a party in a drug dealer’s basement, with lunatics grabbing your ass whenever they feel like it, and everyone around you just saying, “Deal with it, bitch.”
Synereo is like being in your own private house where you have control over who you want to make business deals with, invite to dinner or go to bed with.
Problem #2: Popular and well-respected, valuable content creators and influencers and also those with high reputation do not currently control the direction of the reward system.
Also, popular and engaging content is not receiving the appropriate monetary rewards.
Examples: Take one of @tuck-fheman’s latest episodes of Steemocracy:
@tuck-fheman/steemocracy-a-steem-comic-or-volume-11-or-jeff-berwick-interviews-dan-and-ned
So far it has 159 upvotes and 26 comments which has resulted in $6.97. 159 upvotes is worth more than $6.97 obviously. His artwork is all original and it is a hilarious look at some of the inner drama that is ongoing within the Steemit universe. If I had the means, I would personally want to add at least $100 to @tuck-fheman’s payout, as I think it is high-quality, labor-intensive and extremely hilarious plus being insightful. Tuck also has a very high reputation on Steemit. How this did not make it to the top of the “HOT” category, I don’t understand.
Let’s look at one of my posts that received 353 upvotes and 138 comments.
Guess how much the payout was? $142. Here is the post in question: @stellabelle/forget-about-the-fucking-money-on-steemit-for-a-second-dedicated-to-klye-who-shook-up-my-brain
I’m not bitching here, but merely showing that the correlation between popular votes & engaging commentary and monetary rewards doesn’t currently exist on Steemit. It’s an arbritary system that inherently makes little sense.
Another issue: one of the accounts I value the most is @dana-edwards. The monetary rewards are not flowing to this user even though it is one of the most valuable and intelligent ones in existence on Steemit currently. To give you an idea how much I value this user’s content: if the posts from @dana-edwards stopped, I would follow this user to a different social platform, just to get the content. See this Synereo post by @dana-edwards to get more technical insight about this emerging platform.
Negative Effects: Mass fleeing from Steemit.
To professional writers, influencers and others who could be beneficial, Steemit doesn’t look very appealing, and it currently has a downgraded status among quality content creators, writers and others. I have asked several professional writers and the consensus is: “Steemit is like a casino.” I have to admit, they have a very valid point.
Solution: Synereo’s structure is built upon an attention economy which is at the core based upon the reputation of content creators as opposed to the monetary reward system being controlled by a handful of powerful whales (all of whom occupy a very narrow demographic.)
This is a fairly good explanation of Synereo's design:
On the Synereo network, there is a built-in economy that understands our attention as a scarce commodity and thus we should be paid if someone wants to reach our attention (and mainly - if we create a content that attracts attention of other people). In the network, there is a built in reputation system called REO and the higher our REO is, the more must an advertiser pay to reach our attention. Also the higher our REO is, the more people can see our content organically (it has a higher reach). This new economy and reputation system incentivize people to be a valuable part of their community.” Source: -http://tsuforum.com/topic/1226-synereo-decentralized-social-network/
Watch this video to get an overview of how Synereo works:
It remains to be seen whether the Synereo system outperforms Steemit since its launching its alpha phase in September, but the fact that the creators of Synereo have been developing and fine tuning their platform for two years would indicate that it has achieved a level of sophistication, compassion, intricacy and intelligence that is currently lacking in the Steemit platform.
If Steemit doesn’t pivot soon, it will most likely see a further degradation in quality, user engagement and adoption, all of which will result in an ustoppable downward trend.
Stay tuned because I will be joining Synereo and doing real-world comparisons with these two platforms. One thing is glaringly clear with the introduction of Synereo, the centralized platforms like Facebook are definitely on their way out.
The future looks good for content creators and those who possess integrity.
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