It is true that money does strange things with people. And it is the same here and the same on youtube. People do come here with the idea to make a quick buck, but, besides exceptions, this is not the case. It is hard to get noticed and this decreases the faith in the Steem.
We should see the money part as a nice side effect and focus on interaction. Interaction is the only key to success on Steem. But it is a hard and long road. And yes buying some votes sometimes help!
But while we don't have the same power on the steem blockchain, we do have all the same possibilities and opportunities. Normally I don't refer to one of my own posts in a reply, but I did devote a post to interaction today! Feel free to take a look at it!

I don't intend to snap, as I have more important things to think about, but when it comes to centralisation, Steemit roughly does the same by different means; the "issues" you refer to. Strictly speaking, there is no censorship here, but the kingdoms that have been built don't look very decentralised or benign to me.

I hope that the transparent nature here helps mitigate some of the anxiety you describe, but to be honest, with my very small understanding of bots, it's almost as opaque as anything. I'll keep sharpening my vision.

In a manner of speaking, this is the polar opposite of your post yesterday "Pain or gain, demonetize or monetize?" but it raises the same questions about just _what_ this place is. 
 
It seems currently the only way to get noticed on steemit and in the real world is to play the social game or to buy your way there, a self fulfilling plutocratic prophecy. 

From what I've seen the world likes to ignore the problems and then say "Oh how horrible" when something that was bound to happen finally does, just like the shooting at youtube HQ.

The sad reality, at least whilst people are accepting of it, seems to be that no matter how many tiny lives are ruined, it's fine as long as the ~~whales~~ wheels keep turning. 😉

After all, it's just another _trending headline_ for a day, then it's old news.

Maybe this is why Steem is decentralised. No headquarters needed! ;)

I feel that some of the biggest noise made about censorship are those who have been guided by the subtle hand of social compliance. From figures of authority who share lols about lefties wanting rights for flowers, they are drawn into a world where they start willingly running with whatever they are being told, as long as it comes from those that they are compliant to. Eventually, they are shouting about how their very valid different opinion on why the holocaust was overstated is being censored, why can't they say their view, it is the corporations, deep state and Soros pushing these views down.

Personally, I got fed up of the endless circles that you have to dance around with the bad faith actors on Twitter, so I binned it off. For gaming, a past time that is plagued with a shitty audience, one of the best communities I have been part of is heavily moderated. Some would say that this is censorship, I just found that it was conductive to creating a positive community.

Eventually you have to draw the line in front of some things. There are massively obvious instances of content you have to control. A blanket statement of "allow everything" or "disallow everything" really isn't going to cut it. It's a really hard line to draw, though, and it is far from cut and paste.

I can see the possibility of what you are saying. The scenario here is a little more skewed than the YouTube one imo. I, and many like myself found out about Steemit by watching Youtube videos made by large stakeholders of Steem. They blatantly lie in the videos, making it seem as though money will rain down on you if you can create quality posts. 

I only invested a little in the platform, as I subscribe to the never invest more than you can lose idea. I am sure there are some that have watched these same lying videos from large stakeholders (some of them witnesses) and they invested a lot of money, only to see that they were lied to and it would take them months to get their money back out of the platform once they realized how badly they were lied to. A dangerous game the ones making these videos play, as sometimes there are ramifications to being a con man.

Powerful post . Obviously no one will agree with this woman's heinous actions but I have been reading all over the place how people are becoming increasingly frustrated with youtube and their "oppressive" treatment of its users.

If the bot's go (hopefully) the only ones who will snap are the high earners and the ones who own the bots. You are proof that you can write something interesting and decent and not use a bot. I haven't looked at your payouts but this one is already at $45.53 and is only an hour old with 75 votes. If i didn't know better I would say you are using a bot lol.

pretty sad what happened and details are still emerging. sounds like people are frustrated with youtube these days because of recent changes in payments to partners (I am one of them).  Still it's not reason enough to shoot people or violence in general.

DTube is controlled by voting power and as such the Steem elites.  It’s good to have an alternative to YouTube.

Editorial Response: The YouTube shooting only happened yesterday.

As always, your conversation is on point. Entitlement is everywhere, even on Steemit. It's not a surprise though. The internet is just an extension of the real world. If something exists in the real world, it will exist on the internet (often times in a more extreme manner).

We can cry out as much as we'd like about getting rid of the bidbots, but unless people stop using them and supporting them, they won't be going away. Just as much as the creators of the bidbots are at fault, the users are at fault as well. There would be no bidbots if they were never used...

The good news is we are a distributed community.

The rewards are very uneven at the moment and indeed it is very hard as a minnow to make any ground on here - ive been on here nearly 2 months and its been a hard slog! Fun, but hard! I do agree about the entitlement. I think I write good articles and some of them dont get much rewards but im ok with the im slowly building a following and slowly but surely my rewards are becoming more consistent and rising.

This is something pretty crazy  to think about, I'm still trying to wrap my head around this whole thing. It's obvious to anyone that has been paying attention that narratives get skewed as to serve an agenda more efficiently, but as you have pointed out we must not ignore the possibility of us going down a similar spiral. 

If she is the first and last time this happen, then we might be able to chug this one as an outlier and safely ignore it. Now, this is also to say that at least from where I stand we seem to have some sort of cognitive decline in our populations.

I'm not try to be unsympathetic but the idea that I'm owed because I create therefore I will kill my oppressors who have chosen not to pay my youtube creations is quite distorted. 

We might be dealing with extreme cases of entitlement, not that I know the solution to such a social problem. 

I hope more information gets dug on this whole thing, this does not make me too hopeful for our species I have to say.  Sadly, I would prefer for it to be revealed she was having an affair with someone or something more stupidly common.

And as the chances increase that something like that could happen to Steemit users, so increases the need for wallets to become private. Maybe still have it visible behind the scenes, but to have it in the open isn't responsible... unless Steemit is claiming to be responsible for any consequences. 

You can always find someone to blame, if YouTube changed the policy and the algorithm you can always move to a different platform. This is true for everything in life, once we start the blame game we cannot really change anything.

It was an unstable person who had their income taken away.

Money.  She was mad she wasn't making more.  And that is what happens when money becomes apart of this.

Love this!  Thank you for your time.