Ask HN: Is SteemIt a scam? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is SteemIt a scam?

2 pointsuniqueid6 comments

I'd ask on SteemIt, but there's a lot of Koolaid drinking going on there. It has some cool features, but also some glaring warning signs. If I trust anyone's opinion, it's HN. What do we think: next Reddit, or pyramid scheme for suckers?

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This is also in the new queue right now: https://medium.com/@BlockByBlock/the-ugly-truth-behind-steem...

Seems pretty self explanatory.

I suspected that it was only just another news aggregator + altcoin + buzzwords, were the creator underestimate how difficult is to moderate and prevent spam, specially if it is successful, specially if it's easy for cheaters to monetize because the karma is somehow directly related to an altcoin.

But after reading the article, it looks much worse.

PS: The thread of the post is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12331824 (no comments yet)

I actually submitted that a few minutes after I posted this "Ask HN." I was poking around, and I thought it was an interesting read.

  if money=="involved":

      print("It's a Trap!")

Even if the creators are completely above-board, the incentives could not be more perverse. The Internet doesn't need more low-quality content! What they are incentivizing is for 1000s of monkeys to churn out crowd-pleasing garbage like Buzzfeed. Jason Calacanis already tried that with Mahalo and it provided a lot of mediocre articles.

But beyond that, there is a really unpleasant vibe to the site. Like an Amway kind of feel, where a small number of people who got in early are exhorting new users "Don't give up. Stick with it! The money will come" and half of the articles are about steemit itself.

The idea is good, but the implementation seems sketchy.

Steemit provides an example of the failings of an oligarchy. When you give power to a limited few it is exceedingly rare that any equal distribution of power and wealth is to exist.

Democracy tries to solve this, however whilst it is not direct (also known as true) we still have an oligarchy, just an elected one. It shares all flaws with an oligarchy except how permanent those in power stay as usually a new election is held every 4 or 5 years within a representitive (or false) Democracy.

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