Here are my thoughts on Steemit and the arguments for and against after having been in the platform for some time.
After reading @charlieshrem post on the launch of Steemit, which you can find here, and @dan article here on how to strike a balance between present regulation and the cultural do's and dont's from the crypto community, I believe the way in which Steemit was launched is perfectly legitimate, and as of today is the only way in which the "venture" can be funded and move forward without getting a legal warning or fine whilst denying coherent firepower against Steemit to the myriad of trolls and crypto-extremists that at present roam the decentralized landscape.
The only "but" I have with regards to the above is that to check all the "boxes" mentioned by Dan in his post the promoters eventually have nothing to do to further develop the platform. This is a "must" to comply with present regulations, which puts the argument at the center of the fight between those who blame whales for powering down and those who approve of it as a way to further improve the platform by hiring developers and the like (an interesting debate on this subject may be found in the comment section of the @charlieshrem post mentioned above). As of there, I see a lot of arguments about the present distribution of weights within the community as per the allocation of "SteemPower", I myself wrote on this here and the multilingual promotion problems here, and an incredible amount of ranting going on in all sorts of forums about Steemit being a scam and complaints for Steemit not actually being a get rich quick scheme..
By definition a scam is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. I see Steemit as an experiment, I even see Bitcoin still as an experiment. The truth is that there are between 650 and 700 cryptocurrencies running around looking for miners, funders, addicts, evangelists and the whole lot of them and very few of these prosper. Steemit is prospering, it did see a lot of initial traction, now showing signs of slow decline, too early to forecast anyway, but it has rapidly become one of the leading cryptocurrencies by marketcap, and as of today shows quite a remarkable user base in excess of 75k, and all of this in just two months. Steemit promoters haven't made false promises, the whitepaper has been applied to a reasonable degree, and there haven't been any misleading messages. If you've joined the community or bought Steem its because you decided to do so. If the project didn't fulfill your expectations, or you got hot headed because of some article or forum thread regarding potential profit or growth, well, you should better filter your inputs or make your commitment/investment decisions from a more pragmatic position.
On the other hand, I see a lot of complaints regarding the distribution of SteemPower and the ensuing voting weight distribution, I myself labelled it as the embryo on an oligarchy (Thoughts on Steemit power distribution and Steem Power - An anthropology based approach). The bulk of these arguments are the off-springs of the realization that Steemit isn't a get-rich-quick scheme, and are produced by users pissed off by all of a sudden realizing that they aren't going to pay their mortgage by writing in Steemit. Some will, but as everything in life, success and money only come after a lot of hard work and commitment, the rest is more or less winning the lottery.
Bearing the scam and get-rich-quick arguments in mind, the truth is that these come mainly from people who; a) are jealous of the success, and believe they should be entitled to launching such a successful experiment but fail to understand they either lack the talent or commitment to do so, b) by those who all of a sudden realize they won't access riches as quick and easy as they thought they would through Steemit and so try to biass the platform, still in its early days, towards some kind of system to put them in a better position by throwing moral arguments to whales and community leaders in an effort to make them "feel bad". These are the spoiled children who believe they're entitled to something just because they exist.
The above users tend to get confused with those who honestly try to make a buck or two, are interested in the blossoming of the platform, in the way in which they understand it fosters decentralization and provides a vehicle to further improve our world, or those who are simply hanging around experimenting without a clear objective, just for the sake of knowledge. So, the amalgamation of all these users is the basis for debate, proposals and provides a healthy foundation upon which to build the community.
In spite of the above, and understanding and believing there are lots of things to fine tune and polish within Steemit, a starting point to analyze some of the behaviors from a decentralized and free ethics perspective would imply;
1.- Whales are entitled to powering down and doing whatever they see fit with the fruit of their effort (let it be more or less).
2.- Whales don't carry a specific responsibility regarding the wellbeing of the community or the future of the platform, if you don't like what they write, too bad, don't vote them up, it you can't get their attention, too bad, work harder, if you believe they should do something about something, then go and tell them. The community will end up filtering those who are in for good and those who're just in for a quick profit, who will wither away and be replaced by new whales.
3.- If you believe in Steemit in the long run, then you shouldn't focus in the short term but on laying the foundations for becoming a pre-eminent community member in the future.
4.- Yes, there's a "power concentration" problem to be solved, but for God's sake, this thing is just three months old.
In my humble opinion Steemit's biggest problem is managing motivation. The problem lies in striking a balance between the passion and expectation of new users joining the platform, and the realization that success is only going to happen as a result of extreme talent or very hard work over a reasonably long period of time. Now, the platform will succeed if it provides a reasonable time-span between the point in which users sign-up and become successful provided their work deserves it. As of today, this "thesis" isn't fulfilled, because of voting power accumulation, an improvable tagging system, the lack of a multilingual road map to further distribute success, etc... you name it. This is nourishment for the lack of motivation, and the fact that users witness some making big bucks with little effort whilst making an effort without return only diminishes Steemit's chances to succeed. I think its reasonable to think that the further down the line of the platform's life, the longer the delay to reach a significant goal, thus undermining the platform's future. We've seen this in Youtube.
I'll stop writing here, I think I'm going crazy. What's below is just a stupid bonus I found myself writing.
The road map should take into account:
t0 when a user signs up
m motivation
e effort
tN time when a goal is achieved
SPoS Steemit's probability of succeeding.
SPoS = (tN-t0)x(mxe)
where motivation should equal g(goal definition) times Tg(Time to goal)...
and e(effort) should equal p(number of posts) times q(quality of the posts)...
Thus...
SPoS = ((tN-t0)x((gxTg)x((e(pq)))/(tN-t0)
The bigger the result of tN-t0 the lower the chance of success.
PS: I like to think I'm in Steemit for the long run, even though I must admit my motivation is sometimes weakened by repeated failure :D