This HF22 hardfork or how the heck it is called caught me in my worst time on Steem. The time I've been absent around here for about three weeks and haven't documented myself too much about it I have to say. I did notice some changes though when coming back online on the blockchain and some are encouraging while some are not at all. Lets start with the good part, shall we.
That is the fact that, from what I've noticed, posts get much more visibility nowadays and much more votes than before the occurrence of the fork and that's great for content creators, although Steem is still cheap as hell. We all like that and it's possible thanks to reduced spamming and abuse of the platform that seems to be a result of what the hardfork brought. I would say that the price of Steem has something to do as well, but that's another discussion.
On the other hand flag wars are alive and well, as almost anyone can see, and somehow look alike to some battles between the good and the evil for the salvation of the earth(Steem). In this case "the good" being the community members of Steem(whales, dolphins and minnows that consider themselves community members and not just simply users like myself) and "the evil" being some users that are considered to be abusing(still) the platform and some circle jerking groups that are accused of abuse as well.
There aren't that many spammers as for example a year ago I would say, but looks like that abusers are still active. Now what abusing the platform actually means is really over my head to write about but I kinda get the topic and I see two simple changes that could help a lot. Something that even a child could think of but would at the same time "destroy" Steem's decentralization status. If we can call it decentralized when we have downvotes at hand that can shot almost any mouth.
The first change that could occur is to limit the daily posts of one user to lets say three or four per day and for what I remember there were some discussions in 2018 about this feature to have existed at the beginning of times. This way the ones posting ten times a day or more won't be able to do that anymore and won't take that much from the rewards pool having a reduced cup to do that. They would probably create multiple accounts but it's a bit of work to manage all of them and that might discourage them.
The second change that I can think of would be "no self votes" and that's something that I mentioned for years in here as a positive feature. I don't even see the point of it... to upvote yourself... It's like masturbating and I don't know why there was this feature introduced right from the beginning. I am using it because it is there but I wouldn't mind getting rid of it at all. Let the followers appreciate your content and boost it. I might be subjective about this feature because I don't have much voting power to pour on myself but I really believe this would change a lot the way Steem currently works.
Enforcing such changes through a hardfork or something like this(I am not a tech guy), flag wars and abuses might get tempered but on the other hand we can't talk anymore about a decentralized blogging platform because we don't have that freedom and status anymore. At the same time I'm thinking that are we ready for decentralization and that much freedom? Do we deserve it?
It seems not, because we don't know what to do with it and we abuse it, not all of us of course, same as it is happening in every aspect of life where the human kind has this type of freedom and lack of a central force ruling for it. Only because we are too egocentric and care too less about the other community members when minding mostly of our own good and profit. That's the level of consciousness at which we are currently at... No offense.
Bottom line, I might have disturbed the calm waters of decentralization of Steem with my ideas but I don't see any other options. At least at just a glance on what's happening with this platform currently and how we "still behave" after years of coexistence and decentralizated new social media environment. It simply doesn't works smooth and equal for everybody and who knows if it will ever do that. Now, if you have any other ideas, "decentralized" or "not", it would be nice to share them in a comment. Something good might get out of this type of interaction.
Source of images: https://pixabay.com/
Thanks for attention,
Adrian