Topic: Steem pyramid scheme revealed - page 52. (Read 107064 times)

It doesn't matter who owns the stake. Censorship still requires a nuclear option, no matter who pushes the button.

More feedback from Steemians:


Edit: add this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOE1HFEL8XA

yup.

smooth, you ever see this article?:

"The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed"
www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/

It's kind of jaw dropping, but at the same time it's very much "of COURSE that's what this looks like in action."



MWD

Why the big sell off? Time to buy?

That is my point.

Censorship resistance. In a world where social networks tweak their algorithms to bury what they don't like, in a world where social networks try to create upheaval in countries, or shape elections, or censor influential people from posting altogether, this is something that could be of great value.

Not necessarily true, if Dan and Ned sell their stake to Narc Suckerborg. Then the Graphene DPoS blockchain witness and full node servers can be made more private than they already are.

You may argue that the masses would stop using the site[1], and then in the same breath you (and/or others) argue that they won't care about the "pre"-mine either.

You (all) need to make up your mind. Do the users care or not? It is actually an extremely important question, because if the users don't care, then we are wasting our time with blockchains.

So you all better start to get my point about the naming and the entire point of viral attraction better be the ideology, else we are simply barking up the wrong tree with social networks on the blockchain. Note the way we sell it to them matters though. We might not emphasize government totalitarianism, and simply point to the kind of corporate abuse smooth mentions above. Which I presume is a more palatable notion to mainstream users than the fear of a 1984 government (which would likely alienate them making the site appear to be populated by tin foil hats and UFO apocalypse doomsters). A "pre"-mined PoS blockchain is a corporate blockchain. It puts the control in the hands of too few of entities which could sell out control at any time. And as I showed in my most recent blog, the debasement rate is far too low to diminish their stakes any time soon. Note if somehow Steem Inc could actually give away that 40% stake they hold as free signups (and/or spend it to diverse contractors and vendors) and if those aren't 85% abandoned as they appear to be from the steemd.com stats, then the stakes of the whales could perhaps be diminished to less than 50% faster, but alas that doesn't appear to be the case. Unfortunately we perhaps can't hope for the whales to sell their powered down STEEM POWER stake 1% a week, because that would likely crash the price as it appears to be doing.

(I love debating with smooth because he comes up with really clever logic, then it challenges me to come up with more clever logic than him. It is a fun chess and he often wins and sometimes I do too. Hope he is similarly not bored.)

P.S. For those who think I am nitpicking, please observe that it is a mathematical fact that Steem is not growing virally. The daily signups are not growing, they are flat. Steem is slowly failing. And that is a fact. Unless something changes (such as a mention on national TV), it is already checkmate in slow motion. So when you read my posts, realize I am trying to think of how to fix the concept with a competitor. If that turns you off, then put me on ignore. You aren't going to stop me with your dislike of me. The rewards gimmick is not working as a viral onboarding attraction. Unfortunately. It may also be possible to innovate on top of Steem without forking it ... I'm still in this analysis process so I can't yet conclude unequivocally ...



Edit: I've just realized that "steem" (as in steam) could also associate with locomotion. "Everybody is doing a new dance now, do the Locomotion ... so come on and do the locomotion with me":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNNW0SPkChI

Yeah I think that could be a great theme song for Steem:

https://steemit.com/steem/@anonymint/steem-it-come-on-do-the-locomotion-with-me

[1]

Note that someone could create a fork that is protocol compatible with the blockchain without violating the license which prevents forking the Steem source code. If such code was not ready, then those who attempted to fork the code of Steem without written permission of SteemIt, Inc. would be doing so illegally (which means if Narc Suckerborg bought SteemIt, Inc. he could legally fork the Steem source code). I am not quite sure how the law would treat users of the illegally forked source code, as opposed to those developers who forked it. Not clear who the license is enforceable upon   Even forking the protocol legally may not be sufficient, if the users simply continue to download their clients from Steemit.com which is then under the control of Narc Suckerborg. The users would blissfully receive the protocol that Mr. Suckerborg has decided they should receive. Afaics, it always distills down to that if the users don't care en mass, then there is no censorship resistance. Or we'd end up with a proliferation of perhaps non-interoperable protocols each serving a different set of political preferences. In other words, what I am really saying is that we don't want to end up with just one funnel Steemit. We want to embrace multiple blockchains and then write tools to interopt between them, because that is the natural path anyway.

I don't see a particular sentence but the concept is woven throughout the SBD section, for example in describing SBD as analogous to convertible notes, mentioning that conversion can only be done in one direction, etc.


First of all converting SBD does not deliver VESTS, it delivers liquid STEEM (which can then be converted to VESTS via a power up). Second of all, VESTS are fungible so there is no such thing as "which VESTS".

A huge part of the censorship being done by sites like Twitter and Facebook is not due to legal action, it is done entirely at their own discretion, for marketing or political reasons, and they can do much of it invisibly. For example by just controlling which posts appear in Facebook feeds. If no one sees the post, then it doesn't matter that they didn't literally remove it. No one gets to scrutinize the algorithms/filters that Facebook uses to decide what shows up in feeds.

Any form of censorship of Steem/it would have to be explicit and would require fairly dramatic public action (such as electing their own witnesses and forking). At a minimum that is a gain in transparency.

It also means that the full nuclear option of a fork would have to be done even for small forms of censorship like deactivating a single account (unlike Twitter/Facebook/etc. who can do this with the push of a button). Again this is a large gain in terms of censorship-resistence, in practice.

LOL, iamnotback is formally known as anonymint. He goes way back. His name is Shelby and he is not a Larimer.

I am starting to thing that IAMNOTBACK is a paid shill for Steem. He's a fairly new account, mainly active on two threads (both pro-STEEM), and he's defending Steem HARD on both.

Probably Larimer.

I also think a lot of people have him on ignore.

I don't know why you guys are still stuck on the getting paid delusion.

Most people are not going to be making any significant money on Steem via the blogging rewards system.

Do the math. Rewards are 7.75% of market cap yearly with 50,000 signed up users, so 0.0775 × $200m ÷ (12 × 50000) = $26 monthly per user. But the rewards are distributed non-linearly roughly in a power-law distribution where the upper 20% get 85% of the rewards, thus 80% of the users will get 0.15 × 0.0775 × $200m ÷ (12 × 40000) = $5 monthly. If you argue that actual usership is 1/10th of that, then multiple those figures by 10, but realize the system is failing at adoption then (and the market cap is way too high for the number of actual users). Social networks are typically valued at around $100 per user, if we are looking at the stable case down the line. Even if we up that to say $1000 with expectation of acceleration and more ecommerce than typical social networks ad funded models, it is still only $77.5 per year per user without factoring in the power-law distribution effect.

We need another reason for them to like to be on Steem.

I think the strongest argument for the Steem name is, "I eSteem you" shortened to "I steem you" said by most users of the system to their favorite blog authors.

But who wants to say "I steem you"   It sounds pretty sleazy.

Have you considered that steemit cannot be compared, even on the name-basis, with any other platform, solely due to the difference in its economic model (paid content vs free content)?

Meaning that people's reaction could be ...."well, I don't care what it's called, as long as I get paid".

Does the Steemit name convey this meaning:


Of course the caveat problem is Steem being DPoS (delegated-proof-of-stake) with 19 witnesses (delegates) and most of the stake controlled by a few guys. And Steem's license prevents forking, so if someone brings a legal action that forces Dan and Ned to censor the blockchain, then we the ecosystem are maybe fucked. So this ideal may not be strictly true for Steem.

I'll just admit I am a literary dunce and can't decipher your poetry.

Some more anecdotal feedback from that 20-something (or is it 30? looks younger) female attorney who was brought to Steem via her cryptonerd bf (or is husband?):

Polonius is a complex character--so I'm not sure how you pin down a context....but, if I can do it, I'll do it within the confines of 14 lines, a nuanced rhythm, and with a few pics--no promises on how it turns out--gibberish or nein (but I promise ya neither theo now.)

Lol, and he continued? Ah well... what can I say.

I did before but he still didn't get it and replied again accusing me of being incorrect:

Just say "It's 77% of the 10% = 7%" and you are done. Don't write entire paragraphs with your scarce time.