I recently had a long discussion in the chat. I won't reveal any names and that's not the point here. This person is fairly known, due to his contributions.. And the thing is..
We both agreed on specific things regarding steemit..
First of all .. There's been endless complaining during the past few days..
Complaining about steemit being a lottery. More complaints about payouts.. Even more complaints about steemit making the rich people richer.. And so on.. And so on.. And so on..
"Rags to riches" stories aren't so common..
Not as common as one would have hoped!
Let me describe this and tell you why..
In a previous post of mine, I used @gavvet as an example. You can read about it here. This Will Most Likely End Up In Another Post With 20+ Readers .. But it Shouldn't!
The thing is. I never meant gavvet any harm. It's not his fault that whales upvotes his content. He's a good author and he contributes a lot to the community. He deserves all the credits!
The REAL issue here however, are in fact the whales. I know I know, whales?! "They are the only ones who can actually make one person go from rags to riches, what are you talking about?!"
Seriously though.. Think about it..
People with that much power.. Will always have the most power. No matter what you do.
Sure, I could buy steem power and make a change in the whole community myself, but I can't afford it. I don't have that much money to invest.
Anyhow..
Once I made my post about gavvet, I obviously raised some questions.. Not only to myself, but too others as well..
That's also the reason for my discussion in the chat to begin with. I was confronted. I had to answer questions..
And I did that. Because that's who I am. I stand for my thoughts and for my beliefs. I'm raised that way.
Another thing is.. That I don't have to defend myself. I choose to do it.
No matter if you're a minnow, a whale or if you're just some seaweed.. I don't have a problem talking to you.
I won't discuss my own earnings or talk about me being satisfied or not. Instead, I'll talk about steemit & the real issues. Most of the whales are upvoting content from just a handful of authors. And that's what I showed you in my previous post. The post where I used gavvet as an example. Here's some other examples of the same thing..
And BEFORE anyone starts discussing things about this specific author..
I don't know him and I don't state this to point any fingers towards him. This is used in the same way as I used the screenshots in my previous post about gavvet. This is used as an example. Nothing more than that.
And here's what I want to bring to the surface..
You can cleary see what's going on here..
Upvotes from the same whales..
It's nothing wrong with that!! - Or is it..?
Do you really think that someone can get ~$1000 in 25 minutes.. Meanwhile other people are getting a few cents or a couple of dollars at the best..? - Sure! Everything is possible!
But.. Do you think that could happen... Four times in a row..? - What's the odds of that?!
- These whales doesn't even read the content. They upvote it because they know the author provides quality content. Most of these whales are doing that .. due to one simple reason.. Money.
On the other hand.. We have whales like @berniesanders and @dantheman, which I also talked about in my previous post. These two are digging around steemit. They are trying to find these "gems" among all the spam and crappy content being posted each minute..
I know there might be a few other whales doing the same thing.. But I actually don't find it necessary to bring you even further evidence about this. It's easy to spot.
Just use https://steemd.com/@username and you'll see what the whales are upvoting.. or downvoting. http://catchawhale.com will give you a list of the whales too..
Spend a couple of minutes there, check the whale activity and you'll see what I mean.
Furthermore ..
I'm doing whatever I can to bring more people to steemit.. I've talked about some of it in this post: Steemit: I will tell 500,000 people about you!! - And This WILL Make Us Go BIG!
But.. Seriously speaking.. This is not what we need. Not at this point.
What we should have done.. Is to build a more stable foundation to begin with..
We should have made it possible for more people to establish themselves. We should have allowed people to become whales and dolphins..
With hundreds of new people signing up each day.. MOST of the content disappears among all the spam and new posts.. It's hard to find good content.. Both for me, and for the people with enough steem power to make anything good out of it. -Both @berniesanders and @dantheman seems to be aware of this.. Which would be the reason they do whatever they can to upvote new users instead of the same already established authors that most of the others whales are doing.. They see this as a problem. I bet they are..
And it sure is a problem..
Disable whales to upvote the same author more than once per 24 hours. That is one solution to this problem.
That will force everyone to actually spend time on steemit.. And to find good content by reading it. They need to be picky about the content they upvote, instead of just upvoting the same established authors multiple times.. If they don't do that.. They won't be able to earn what they earn today..
The only downside I can see with something like this.. Is the money some of the established users might lose.. And that's bad.. And I would feel for them.. But seriously though.. Wouldn't it be worth it?
Wouldn't it be better to upvote their BEST content .. And to let them earn money on that, and allow OTHER authors a more fair chance of getting upvoted by the whales and dolphins too?
Best Regards,
hitmeasap