The price drop in Steem and crypto in general has people going one of two ways, either they see it as the end of the platform and Steem, or they take it as an opportunity to buy up while it's cheap.
Whilst this is great for people like me who make good money outside of Steemit those who use it as a source of income or to boost their income are now suffering.
It seems to be driving people away en masse, whilst Steemit still stays active thanks to bots in reality it's a barren wasteland lacking in people and community.
Something I've noticed more prominently during the price drop.
Whilst there has always been debate about bots(albeit mostly bidbots) it seems, at least to me, that Steemit is becoming more robot than human. Sure people are posting but unless it's something in trending not many people are commenting, not many people are voting or connecting.
But we don't even notice
For the most part we don't even realize. 80% of all votes now are autovotes, the next 15% is probably "curators" and the last 5% is just people scrolling through the tags/platform and actually using it
What good is it when everyone is a content creator and no one is an actual consumer. It's like a singer getting paid to perform to an empty venue. Great they made some money but really, it isn't what anyone wants. Why is there no longer an audience for Steemit...
How can we expect user retention when we have nothing to offer them?
I've seen some great content creators, people who brought real value to the platform, leave because there was no audience for them. They might get lucky and get curated but for the most part they were ignored. I wonder if it's because there isn't any people left using this platform.
Why is curating so damn hard?!?
One issue with Steemit is the amount of utter shite that gets posted. It shouldn't be tiring to find something good. Curating shouldn't be hard. I shouldn't' have to scroll through 3 days of posts under one tag to find something worth curating.
Sure maybe the quality that qualify for real curation is higher than is needed but it just shows how much bad there is compared to good. Yes I know it is subjective, but we all know there is plenty of shitposts and abuse of the system.
Something I think would help?
I wish there was a way to search a tag but exclude other tags from it, for example I want to see nature posts but I dont just want to scroll through a whole bunch of photos of trees. So I search nature, exclude photography and bam there goes maybe 30% of the posts I would scroll past or through anyway.
Or maybe you're interested in the future of Steemit but not cryptocurrency. Same as above and bam you don't end up seeing all the shit about price comparisons and all the people who think they can predict the market.
Sure that isn't going to stop bots or keep people here, but it would assist with finding good content and hopefully building communities designed around one particular topic.
When it comes to the bots?
In all honesty there is nothing wrong with the bots. But just as everything it requires balance and the balance is off. Whilst it's great to have curation trails, to use an autovoter and to be part of discord groups who share good posts between them, it has taken away a huge amount of actual interaction. I have been getting over 100 upvotes on a post and regardless of how much it makes I wonder if anyone actually read it. 0 comments, 0 response other than an automatic vote.
I do not give a shit about the 50c I make for the post.
I just want people to start connecting again and being people. The bots aren't the problem, the problem is we're relying on them far too much. It's also the only way to get into trending now. I don't remember the last post with a high payout that didn't have booster or upme and however many others as the top 4-5 votes.
We need PEOPLE for Steemit to not only survive, but to thrive.
Let us try and bring back community, connection and something more to the Steemit bockchain.
When I first came here it felt warm and welcoming. Now it feels cold, like coming back to a hotel room after work instead of your home with your family/pets. It's different and I don't like it. Let's bring back the Steemit where I met all those amazing people when I first came. Forget the politics, the witnesses the forks, forget the issues with price. Build somewhere people want to come and they might stay.
Steem on Steemians