Introduction.... and: Steemit: an interesting experiment or the future?

Good evening fellow nerds. I suppose the future has arrived, you can now be paid for your interactions online. Wait, have I seen this before?

Is anyone old enough to remember AllAdvantage? They used to pay you to surf the web while they served advertisements. I remember getting a $60 check in the mail, it was surreal. I remember feeling like I was getting away with something. Millions of kids were tying up their parent's phone lines mindlessly surfing the internet in isolation to make a few bucks. Looking back the whole thing seems pretty innocent.

Enter 2017 and Steemit.

I'd like to dig into the incentives and social architecture of this thing at some point in the future. For now, I have a few thoughts about Steemit:

• Are people less likely to express themselves freely when even the slightest possibility of monetary reward is at stake?
• How do the different personality types respond in a social systems with or without monetary incentives?
• How does a per action based reward system compare to an overall outcome based reward system?
• What effect does monetary rewards for behavior have on a group's propensity for altruism?
• Is this the beginning of Bladerunner (or that black mirror episode?)
• Can an incentivized forum create an authentic community the way traditional internet forums have achieved over the last couple decades?

I hope this isn't Bladerunner, I really like incandescent lighting.

It seems fair to transfer rewards from the platform managers to content creators if those content creators are now the (decentralized)platform. If you look at the alternative: pretentious doucebags making all the money and abusing their power. Who knows, maybe Steemit has a shot.

-netfl0