Steemians... I greet you. At times things happen and we continue to watch as though it's not our business. But in actual sense, it is our business — steem blockchain is a global business. @ned and @dan may have given us steem ecosystem but its chief means of sustenance is global investment. Hence, if anything happens to steem blockchain (God forbid) all of us — both Dick and Harry — would have our fingers to bite. Steem blockchain is a global project. All of us have a stake in it and as stakeholders and true lovers of steem blockchain, it behoves us to speak up when things are going wrong.
World's renown literary icon, Chinua Achebe, once said and I quote...
"When an adult is in the house, a she-goat is not left to suffer the pains of parturition on its tether."
Steemit, as we know it, is rapidly changing. Things are getting more frustrating by the day. Today, I have choosen not to remain silent anymore. Today, I have choosen to be the voice of thousands of minnows whose efforts are being frustrated daily by those at helm of affairs of utopian-io — a well thought out project — but who are afraid to speak up for fear of their future contributions being rejected, flagged or coming under permanent suspension from making utopian-io targeted posts.
As a Steem-Ambassador, I shouldn't shy away from lending my voice against obvious misdirection of what happens to be the biggest and most impactful project ever built on steem blockchain. I am aware that respected Steemians (most of who had delegated their SP to utopian-io) whose opinions are not taking with pinch of salt may not have been aware of the current happenings at utopian-io, neither do successful steemians; in fact, I believe, any Steemian who sees $5/post would not border himself with making utopian-io targeted posts.
That is to say that those who would have spoken up may not have been in the know. Utopian-io is flooded mostly with people who are in dire need to earn, people who are on the verge of abandoning their accounts, people who spend hours drafting a post and at the end of the day they earn less than $1. And I don't think steemit, as we see it, will be interesting without minnows and other low ranking members.
This post is not a call for people to withdraw their delegations nor for @ned to cancel his own but for utopian-io policy makers to have a rethink on the way they keep making unfavorable policy changes that seem to be against the tenets for which this project was created and massively supported. It is a call for respected and influential Steemians to call @elear and his team to order.
Why would @ned and team be busy working for successful adoption of Hardfork 0.20.0 while utopian-io leadership is busy churning out policies that seem to be antagonistic to the goals of the upcoming Hardfork?
Among the major issues Harfork 0.20.0 would take care of is fastening the process of account creation to attract millions of users to steem ecosystem...
...to support signup improvements on Steemit.com and other sites to bring more users into the Steem ecosystem.
We want to grow Steem to at least to size of Reddit, hopefully larger. Reddit currently has 234 million unique users a month...
Having read what to expect with successful adoption of Hardfork 0.20.0, I decided to speak up against what I consider obnoxious, stifling and unstable policies being churned out daily at utopian-io, which are obviously against the tenets of the proposed Hardfork 0.20.0. @ned and team are concerned with increasing the userbase of steemit.com while the process to achieve that is being unfairly hampered by those who should encourage it.
To be honest, I had wanted to write this post in January when there was a sudden change in requirements for Visibility Category, but an utopian.io Supervisor, having heard my views, said I had valid points and advised I communicate utopian-io team via their Suggestion-for-rule-change Channel. I did as advised and will upload the screenshots at appropriate paragraph in this article.
My case against utopian-io overseers and Why I am raising this issue at this time
I believe if there is any few Steemians who have given their time, energy and resources for success of steem blockchain, I, without sounding immodest, am among. Few weeks after I joined steemit and had realized the benefits of population to steem health, using whatsaap as a communication tool, I convinced 67 persons of my whatsaap contacts to join steemit. This post is not intended to write about my contributions in detail but I have to highlight some of my important achievements so that you appreciate my background and passion for the success of steem blockchain. You can go here, here and here to get a glimpse of what I have been able to do within the time I have been here. It was on the bases of my achievements that I was made a @sndbox fellow and then much later a Steem-Ambassador.
I am one of the Steemians genuinely concerned about the success of this program. I am wearing steemit shoe and can tell exactly where the needle is pinching me. @euronation, a newbie recruitment scheme I have the privilege of founding and leading, is built from the scratch. Over 90% of its 260+ members was recruited through my whatsaap based visibility effort. These are virgin Steemians that I recruited and inspired i
to become hyperactive Steemians.
utopian-io leadership banned whatsaap based visibility contributions
The fact that I had started my whatsaap based webinar on Steemit program long before utopian-io was founded, should tell you that utopian-io rewards wasn't the motivating factor. However, when utopian-io came onboard, I was happy that at least one would be getting some form of rewards for the difficult task of onboarding and guiding new people.
So I, in consultation with @euronation leadership, decided to create an account @euronation for #Euronation community. And the intention was to build its Steem power via earnings from utopian-io rewarded whatsaap based visibility campaigns and use it to curate posts of @euronation community members, who are earning less than $0.05/post. This was my grand plan and I was out to get it executed. Consequently, all my whatsaap based visibility efforts were being reported via @euronation account and submitted to utopian-io for curation.
Day in day out, I used to be all over the internet, joining forums and hundreds of whatsaap rooms to invite people to my webinar. I had had to change my line severally due to Whatsaap and Telegram bans all in determined effort to onboard more people and also build the community account. So you can imagine my frustration when I learnt, surprisingly, that utopian-io no longer accept whatsaap-based visibility posts.
For what reasons did utopian-io leadership ban whatsaap-based visibility posts
I wanted to know if utopian-io leadership have valid reasons for such action, so I went to find out why. And disappointedly, I was told it doesn't cost much to promote Steemit program via whatsaap. Secondly, there are a lot of contributions from that category, and so to them, it is ideal to discourage contributions in that category. Okay. Good and fine.Please read on to see why utopian-io team must be called to order.
I couldn't take it. I went to their Suggestion-for-rule-change Channel and left this complaint as shown by the screenshot image below...
My complaint was thrown into the waste bin, of course
And the new rule?
As part of the new conditions, any visibility effort must have proof of 1000 reach. Promoters responded by using sponsored ad placement on social media (Facebook, tweeter, etc) and were achieving the target. This didn't go down well with utopian-io leadership, and the threshold was raised to 5000 reach. The promoters was hitting that figure. The leadership responded yet again and raised the required reach to 10000. As if that's not enough, below is screenshot of additional conditions that must be met and those being considered, as responded by a member of my community who's in the know...
These stifling policies are not only targeted against visibility category. Any category where there seems to be increasing contributions automatically becomes a target. And one is tempted to ask if utopian-io policy makers are not happy when they see people get rewarded for their contributions. At first, I thought, maybe, they are running out of voting power but, lo and behold, that's not the case as a several checks on their voting power showed it sitting conformably at 100% almost always.
Conclusion: The proposed HF0.20.0 should start with utopian-io
I read in the news today about the dire state of cryptocurrencies and how 10 out of 11 major social media sites had banned cryptocurrency ad placement. And I ask; should we continue to look for where to place ad while we can encourage people to go on massive recruitment campaigns?
Utopian-io alone has the capacity to cause the influx of new members to steem ecosystem by rewarding those who are out in the field, working endlessly to onboard new people. The proposed Hardfork 0.20.0 risk not achieving its aims if the current happenings at utopian-io (with respect to visibility category) are not properly addressed. Let the proposed Hardfork 0.20.0 starts at utopian-io first!
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