I don't truck much with money anymore. So, I don't follow @haejin, or care a fig for TA.

But, I do care quite a lot about Steemit, and the potential of the rewards based social media platform. I think it will change the world. Maybe Steemit won't be that platform (there's some issues), but I'm pretty sure one will.

It's an idea whose time has come.

the reason I'm piping up here, and to you specifically, is you pointed out an extremely salient point from my perspective.

"If it is abusive or not depends on the road this platform wants make."

The code. What the devs craft and what the top witnesses are directed to make of Steem (as the vast bulk of Steem controls who the witnesses are, and choose them as serve Steem, and thus the accounts that hold it) is what we have.

We have it because they specifically sought to make this particular platform. @haejin, @ranchorelaxo, me, you, we didn't have a say. Well, given my SP, I might have the say of a mouse roaring into hurricane winds, but it's not a say that counts.

The original white paper divulged a social media platform intended to reward creators of good content. It wasn't designed to be egalitarian (only about ~30% of rewards were desired to be doled out to common folk), but what it has evolved into is essentially a cryptocurrency mining platform.

@haejin is an essential aspect of the current platform, IMHO. Every bit of sand in the craws of every whale that laments not sucking up the rewards @haejin is receiving is a wondrous blessing to minnows.

Why? Because it isn't @haejin that designed the system, and his superb command of rewards is either going to compel the profiteers that have transformed the social media platform into a crypto mining mechanism to take a step back from the 99% of rewards whales now receive, or they're going to watch their investment eventually decline in value.

All that SP they're capturing that was intended to be the minnows portion (~29% of the pool, or so) will then be worth very little, if anything.

Nothing will prompt Stinc devs and top witnesses to change the code to end the profiteering if @haejin doesn't.

I hope @haejin doesn't knuckle under to the social pressure that is continually exerted on him. His profiteering is a perfect mirror to hold up to the whales, and the ROI they're losing to him is an essential goad to get them to grasp that they need to change the code so that rewards can't be so concentrated.

Doing the math, the whales get 99% of the rewards pool, and that includes @haejin. The rest of us share 1%. If @haejin quit posting and all his rewards were left to the pool, that wouldn't change. The whales, not including @haejin, would still get 99% of the rewards, and the rest of us would still get 1%.

@haejin gets about 5% of the pool now. We minnows would see a 1% of 5% increase in our rewards, and the whales would get 99% of 5% increase. The median payout (the amount most people get) is about .01 SBD, last I checked.

Even if the rest of the whales didn't suck up @haejin's rewards, and left the whole of it to the minnows, who of us would notice 5% of .01SBD?

@haejin isn't taking squat from minnows. He's hitting whales in the only place they'll notice--their wallets. If @haejin can't get them to quit sucking the rewards necessary to support content creators out of the pool, nothing will.

I have a lot of respect for @nomadsoul, but I think he's wrong about @haejin being a detriment to the platform. I think he shows in this post particularly that his heart's in the right place, but I don't think he's giving nominal credit to just how unrewarding Steemit has become since we all started.

I also started in May 2017, and due to my interest being exclusively in the social aspect of the platform I have refrained from ever once using automated mechanisms to gain followers, upvotes, or anything like that.

None of those mechanisms benefit society, but rather replace engagement between people with bots.

Not interested.

I don't think @anomadsoul really is either, but the platform has strong incentives to use it that way.

I hope folks can reconsider how bots, particularly, impact society when accorded the same power to curate that people have; when an economy is misunderstood to be society. Society is far more valuable than mere money.

I hope my comment is understood in the spirit in which I undertake it, which is solely to promote the social media platform which depends on people writing words, and people upvoting them.

All the rest gets in the way of what is really profitable: people speaking their minds.

Thanks!