I've had much time to think about Steem, and the key to its success is immutability. The rest is variable and honestly hard to control. This is a strange conclusion for its simplicity, but it is one very important reason I use it. Only very good ideas cannot be copied. They can be re-said, but originality happens but once, and it can be proved to a patent office.
Realness And Identity
Another important piece often desired by users is realness. I could tell you a hundred stories that are not mine. Despite this, one can sometimes come to sense personality and authenticity.
Identity is hard to prove when anonymity is important or desired. On the internet and on an open blockchain, it is difficult to know anything about a person or to understand their various online presence-s.
How do we protect from sybil attacks and voting augmentation when identity is fuzzy? A simple hands-on solution is to use third-party verifiers of identity. Maybe this should be an optional procedure to improve believability on Steem.
Balance
Another key to Steem's success is balance. A variety of people help insure authenticity and fairness. Deception decreases when many viewpoints and healthy thinking is present. I find personal balance by spending time in nature or immersing myself in something beautiful or useful. History and biographies open my mind.
How do we make Steem economically fair? I don't know, but we must not give up as long as there is immutability of content. The experiment of Steem still is dormant and a better world can still rise from the ashes of all previous failure. It is a somewhat virtual world but not without moment or significance.
Is it not our hope to create a mostly fair system that attracts many users? This may mean different things to different people, but even a capitalistic free-market society can become better or worse, depending on its constituents and their actions.
Actually making Steem fair may require creating another chain with SD being transferable. This may be true since immutability of coinage is also important, and right now influence corresponds to invested-money squared. Perhaps this math is as it should be, but I cannot say this.
As long as money equals popularity, however, I see a possible attack. If money represents popularity, quality or a right-to-attention, then spending money indirectly on oneself leads to getting back spent money and becoming popular. But this is old news. I believe our programmers know of and are addressing these issues.
Conclusion
These are the key issues facing Steem. Immutability of content is of highest importance and a pillar of Steem's architecture. This is obvious to the blockchain community. Achieving realness of human content and good balance is also important to social media sites.
My technical solution to achieving some of this balance... Have three currencies: Money ($), Trustworthy Points (R or ß), and limited supply token (X). People create their own formulas for how they give attention. Money will likely always be an important factor, but at least balance can be achieved form multiple criteria. Trustworthy points cannot be transfered. Those figuring what people want must take each person's unpublished formula into consideration.
Maybe a 1048-bit code can be assigned to each post. It would not be known exactly what it represents, but more or less each bit would represent a group of categories. For some 1 would mean good and 0 bad. Or 1 would be unacceptable and 0 nuetral. Individual users would have their client-side software guess which from 1000s of articles to show based on this code and previous activity.
Thus one would only have to download maybe 10% of all titles. Some entity such as Steemit could attach these codes to each post. The code could have date and code-type attached. This may be a poor or incomplete solution, but some ideas here may be useful.
By the way, can someone create a website which allows you to download all your posts including links to each article you've ever posted on.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Great piece on Social Media. I am happy to upvote. Now following and looking forward to reading more of your posts. Made an interesting post earlier on about the future of Social Media. You may find it interesting. Catch us also on Twitter Twitter✔. Cheers. Stephen
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Thanks for your support
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
You're welcome. If you get a minute check this out. Cheers. Stephen
https://steemit.com/steemit/@stephenkendal/why-dan-and-ned-are-geniuses-and-why-people-should-take-blockchain-seriously
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I have upvoted. Nothing to add.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
SD being transferable: may means by exchange, easily movable must not necessarily at the same value.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit