This is an important question to ask, especially in an environment like Steemit.
User can be influenced by incentives offered through the design of the system. What happens when content becomes competitive, and different sites look to monetize based on different sets of values?
Likely, the people who's posts are most inline with the dominant paradigm on the site are the ones who receive the most financial recognition. It will lead to the same situation we have now, where different sites have different political stripes, but some authors will have a ton more influence than everyone else.
In terms of how to combat it, I think about the differences between the US political system and parliamentary systems abroad. In the US, people choose candidates based on the 2 party paradigm because it's winner take all. In parts of Europe, voters are allowed to make multiple decisions, and the candidate with the most votes wins.
Even on Steemit, voting is all or nothing - vote up, vote down, or don't vote. I think a non-binary decision about the quality of content could help to provide a spectrum of ideas in various sites. Interaction would not be measured by how many people agree with you, but by how many people respond.
This raises another issue worth discussing, which is the idea of being outrageous just to get attention. Let's call it the Paulie Shore effect. I am not sure how fond I am of single-issue sites, but I know I am not interested in single-personality sites.
So what we have may be the worst system of financial incentives, until you start to consider all others.
Thanks for taking the time to reply, I found myself in agreement with most of what you wrote.
I do like the idea of having more political parties in the US having a chance to participate in government. I'm not sure how effective a parliamentary system is a combating polarization. I must admit that I don't know enough about it historically to say how well it works. But brexit comes to mind when I think about polarization in Europe. I think it may be side effect of echo chambers and the global reach of the internet.
Having a wider spectrum of responses would probably be a step in the right direction. Another thing worth doing would be to hide the algorithm that determines how much a user is paid so it's less vulnerable to overt manipulations.
On the Paulie Shore effect, I'd imagine we will see a greater number of people doing this. Anonymity, protect from repercussions, and attention were all ready enough incentive for people to troll. Add a financial incentive and who knows how far that can go. I suppose having that currency be at risk might moderate it. Although having a system like that in place is also ripe for abuse. I think tone policing and political correctness inhibit our ability to explore ideas. We also run this risk of mistaking trolls and people who might be open to change their mind on an issue. But by trying to censor an idea we make the idea more attractive via the streisand effect, lots of people seem attracted to the idea of having taboo knowledge.
I think there is a lot of potential for good on this platform, you last line reminds me of a quote about capitalism i'm no doubt remembering incorrectly. But it's something along the lines of "capitalism is the best of the worst economic systems" meaning it's not great but the others are shit too.
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