We Interrupt This Gaming Blog to Bring You a Steemy Hot Take

I've now been on Steemit for a week, long enough to start getting my first drips of post payouts. It's a heady feeling, getting paid for things I've written in a spirit of fun and sharing! I definitely intend to stick with it, as that powerful reward system has been highly effective in getting me to write regularly, an important personal goal.

Several things about the platform concern me, though, to the point where I wonder if the creators of Steemit really thought ahead about the consequences of their design. Adding money onto the already intense Skinner loops of "likes" and "+1s" exacerbates several existing problems with social media, and introduces whole new ones.

The phrase of the day, dear readers and friends, is "perverse incentive."

Bots and Lotteries

I'd been upvoting @minnow.helper and @lucky.steemian at the advice of one of the folks who introduced me to Steemit, as a way to build up a starting base of tokens, but as of yesterday I've cut that out. Something about it didn't feel right. I have a limited amount of per-day voting power with which to say, "this is quality content I'd like to see more of." And while the daily posts of an SBD distribution bot are content, by the rock-bottom literal meaning of the term, I can't honestly say it's worth reading or something I want to see more of. I was burning my curation allotment on a sort of goofy microinvestment scheme, a moneychanger that adds "100% upvotes" to the already boggling list of currency types that can be swapped for one another on Steemit. And if the concerns of users like @troglodactyl are accurate, these services are depleting a limited resource--the content reward pool--for their weird currency-farming rackets. I don't think I want to be part of that.

Thing is, this trouble is a straightforward consequence of Steemit's design. The ideal is that quality content will be rewarded, but there is intentionally no authority on what constitutes "quality content". The only available definition is a circular one: quality content is what gets upvotes, and if a thing is heavily upvoted, it's quality content. Add the allure of payouts, and it's not far from there to a realization that the optimal way to produce "quality content" consists of posting "UPVOTE FOR FREE SBD" over and over. (Until the market collapses, I suppose. Steemit's incentive setup, like Bitcoin mining, is in many ways peak capitalism: pursuing short-term gain for long-term disaster is A-OK.)

"Ah, but there are curators!" you may say. "People with stakes in the long-term viability of the platform can help get this under control." I'm not so sure. I've seen big-name @curie members resteeming upvote-for-SBD posts; they can get pulled into that loop just as easily as a fresh minnow. And the disproportionate clout of whale curators is another thing I've grown concerned about.

Live by the Whale, Die by the Whale

I was thrilled to see a goofy fanfic post of mine suddenly take off, garnering over 70 upvotes, 100 SBD, and a #2 spot on the trending feed for the "gaming" tag. Jackpot! In my first week, I'd lucked into a moment of profitable popularity. This is the promise of the Steemit gold rush: having something you write get recognition, and from there turn into near-instant cash.

After a bit of chatter with my mentors on the platform, however, I learned a sobering thing: most of the folks upvoting my post probably hadn't even read it. The approval of the high-power curator who'd propelled me into the spotlight was no doubt genuine, and I can take pride in that. But after that point, the flood of upvotes were likely to be bandwagoners hoping to get a cut of the whale's juicy curation dollars. The rules of the Steem content blockchain encourage people to upvote not out of appreciation, but as an investment. Heck, you're even penalized for taking the time to read a post, because the longer you wait, the smaller your curation reward! Optimal play is to hover over powerful curators' blockchains, watch what they upvote, and pounce. I would not be surprised if tools are available to automate this process, the high-frequency trading of the Steemit world.

The flip side of whale curators' power is the tactical nuke of their downvotes. A user with off-the-charts reputation can sink a new user into the negative with minimal effort, dooming their posts never to see the light of day on public feeds and increasing barriers to entry even on follow feeds. And having a massive Steem Power bank means your downvote can make it all but impossible for a post to earn any payout. This has its worthy uses, of course: the ability to axe spam and plagiarism is crucial to Steemit's ongoing health. But imagine also the anticompetitive uses such powers can be put to. Once well established, a Steemian can swat down anyone who seems to be growing in popularity in a similar topic space, and the only folks who can hold you to account are other whales. Is Steemit doomed to be another trickle-up economy, where thousands of bottom-rung workers beg for scraps from a small handful of content conglomerates?

But I Still Have Hope!

The above worries won't stop me from participating, at least not at the current "potential problem, not really a crisis" level. I buy into the ideal of equitably rewarding quality content, where "quality" has to do with truth and benefit and enjoyment, not just payout potential. So I'm going to do my best to put my reputation and SP and voting power toward things I honestly like to read/watch/etc., not copy-pasted lotteries, even if that hampers my earning potential. Be the change, and all that! I do wonder what the creators of the Steem blockchain think about these things, and if they anticipated these consequences of their rewards design before implementing it.

If I'm misunderstanding the way things work here, or blowing something out of proportion, I hope you'll let me know in comments! _{And not, y'know, downvote-bomb me so I never see another SBD}