Reposting Content - So Few are So Sensitive

Over the past few months, I have been running an experiment which has thoroughly pissed some people off on Steemit. As of today, my experiment is over and below is what I have found not just during my experiment but during my first year on Steemit.

I have been on Steemit for almost 1 full year and during that time I have run the gambit of how I interact with the platform and those on the platform. I started off as a lone wolf just trying to understand the platform and how to get out in front of an audience. As I began to understand the innerworkings of the platform, I started to see how hard it was going to be going it alone. There just isn’t any way to get that big of an audience without the support of a community. When I made that realization, I decided to join a few communities and see what they were all about. Some communities were better than others and there were some that were total scams. Some with members who were trying to have a voice and some who actually had power. Power that was delegated to them by other powerful individuals. I began working within a couple of communities, playing by their rules, volunteering my time. At that time, I believed that these groups could make a difference and my involvement would make Steemit a better place. After working with these groups for a few months and coincidentally coinciding with the decline in the price of Steem, I became very disillusioned with the platform, the communities, and my overall experience on Steemit. I was starting to see a darker side to Steemit. I started seeing some of the communities as gangs, rich with censorship, bullying, and intimidation. So, I disappeared altogether for a few months.

During my initial research on the platform, I was intrigued by the thought that here was a platform where you could post your original content and get rewarded for your work. This was before I found out each post expires. That headshot was tough to take. You work hard to produce quality content but if it is not seen by the right people, your efforts were for naught. Originally, I thought people came to the site, they might search for specific types of content no matter how old it might be, and you could get rewarded if someone felt it provided value. That makes sense to me. It is my content and if someone wants to reward me for it a year from now, they should be able to do so. But on Steemit, you had to find an audience that would help elevate your content onto the trending page before the 7-day time limit. What's worse, you really don’t have 7 days. Within many of the communities, and especially those with real reward power, they only upvote content within the first 24-48 hrs. After that, you were on your own. So, it is a mad dash to
figure out how to get in front of not just enough audience, but the right audience.

Once it all hit home, I found out about BOTS. Yes, I have used BOTs many times. Why? Because without BOTs and without powerful communities seeing and believing in your content within those first few precious days, great content languishes away never to be seen again. So, many creators turn to BOTs. There is a lot wrong with using BOTs on Steemit and I am not going to get into most of it but the one important issue for me was seeing that most of the posts ending up on trending and getting the most upvotes are due to their creators use of BOTs. Now, if the content was highly quality content and those creators wanted to use BOTs to self-promote than fine, but a huge portion of the posts ending up on trending and making money were poorly written, simply crypto-charts with very little content, or pure shit. So, what is the point of “trending?” Just a filtered list of high paid out, low quality posts. So, you play a long and self-promote or you go back to the communities and play a long in hopes that very specific people find value in your content as you look for crumbs at their various tables.

Another “light-bulb” moment came when I made a post and watched as I received over 1,000 upvotes in a matter of minutes. At first, I was excited but then logic set in and I was trying to figure out how so many people could read my log post so quickly. Obviously, they weren’t, it was a trail. Out of those 1,000 upvotes, probably only a handful of people actually read it, but fortunately, it was the right person with a lot of power and a big trail.

I also started looking at some of the community’s wallets and starting see how much delegated Steem power they had. People with influence loaning or giving away their influence to others. Gangs getting more powerful because they have powerful benefactors. I have even seen huge delegations being given out to individuals who upvote their own content to increase their own payout as well.

So, there is a 7-day payout possibility (actually 2 meaningful day), Gangs with power, BOTs which dilute an author’s ability to get seen, delegated power making the strong stronger and the weak weaker, and a strict moral code of conduct that everyone is expected to follow. How is anyone expected to create their own path with so much going against them.

This dark side of Steemit was interesting to unravel. These gangs can be communities themselves or just groups of trolls. I have seen people like GrumpyCat and their following hammer authors who have done nothing wrong with so many down votes that the author’s content will no longer display. To me, this is a form of censorship. And, considering Steemit is touted as a censorship less platform, it was disturbing to watch. Grumpycat was not the only entity working this way. I witnessed this many, many, many times by various entities including communities. Even if the content being hammered deserves it, you can’t say Steemit is a censorless platform when people on it do. Yes, content can always be displayed by clicking the little link, but if you take the ability to view content freely, it is a form of censorship.

I have also seen and experienced bullying and intimidation as well. So, after hardfork 20, I decided to conduct my experiment. Once I saw that you could now edit content no matter how old it was, I decided to pull all my old content and repost it over and over to see if people were actually reading it and/ or how long it would take for people to notice.
So, I began. I think I was about on my 5th repost before anyone said anything. That was when I got my first message about reposting. The message was fine. They just said please don’t use our community tag if you are going to repost your content. Fare enough, I removed that tag from all future posts. Still, I was getting small, but ok payouts with lots of upvotes. Again, assuming many were due to trails. Another 5-8 reposts later, I received a similar message about another community’s tag so again, I removed it. Being told something is unacceptable as it relates to my personal property, my content is ridiculous. My content is my content and I can do whatever I want with it. By this point, all tags were generic and were not the property of any community so there should not have been any issue.

Overall, it was as I expected, not a lot of attention but some decent upvotes considering I was just reposting. I do believe there are those few, communities specific individuals looking for payouts who might be reading my content but overall all, not many are. I don't think it important that people read my content or not, I just wanted to see if this platform really is about good quality content, providing global platform to the the powerless or just another reddit waiting to explode. I have made my own determination and so will everyone else. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming: Gangs, BOTs, and Thugs.