Yo what's good folks?
I’m about a week in on Publish0x. How does it compare to Steemit? There are a few notable similarities and differences, which I’ll go into this post.
What I Liked About Steemit
I used the platform for about two years. Mainly for writing fiction and sharing some music stuff. I met some cool fiction writers on there and it was great for doing group fiction exercises. It was easy to find a niche with other people and support them with upvotes. But frankly, that was about it. Steemit had the opportunity for community.
Steemit also faced criticism in terms of the difficult onboarding process for new users. It could be complicated, the interface might be cumbersome for less technically inclined, and the process itself as incredibly slow. These are all true to an extent, but I didn’t personally have a problem with any of that.
What I Didn’t Like
If you are just joining Steemit and have not powered up an account, your votes are worthless. Your voting power will be worthless until you have some few thousand worth of STEEM powered into your account.
It’s also nearly impossible to get weighty votes from other people. Why? Because 90% of the users on the platform have no STEEM either. So most votes have no weight. So most posts you make will earn you $0.00.
The quality of the writing on the platform was, generally, bad. Posts were often tossed together and promoted around voting circles, led by powerful whales. Steemwhales.com, a now defunct website, used to show a graph displaying the wealth distribution on Steemit. It mirrored the worst kinds of class societies where some 1% of users wielded some 90% of all STEEM power.
This wealth inequality led to a lack of critique or engagement, as pissing off a whale meant you could be targeted and have your rewards destroyed.
It led to widespread begging where users would post low level comments on posts by whales, in the hopes of receiving a meagre 1% upvote.
It led to famous whale wars between @berniesanders and @haejin, where the former tried to stop the latter from abusing the rewards pool.
It led to people like @haejin slapping copy/pasted tealeaf readings and calling it “technical analysis”, three to four times a day, for $50 rewards because he owned another high power voting account.
It led to users buying votes with STEEM in the hope of gaining back their money by snowballing on other votes.
It led to scam artists like Jerry Banfield being able to flood the front page with low-quality drivel full of SEO-speak buzzwords.
In short, it was a hot mess of a dumpster fire.
What I Like About Publish0x
Everyone has an equal vote. And that’s it.
Yes, there are assholes that give themselves 100% of tips, because they are greedy fucks and poor and apparently $0.03 means a lot to them, despite the fact that if there was no content written by me, there would be no way for them to tip themselves in the first place.
But I can make a post and people will read it and comment and tip me.
I’m sure there are voting rings despite the best intentions of the moderators here. But they don’t have a sweeping negative effect on the rewards like on Steemit.
I can critique someone and they won’t destroy 100% of a post’s rewards just because they can.
In short, time spent writing articles on Publish0x, after a week, has been far more profitable and engaging than on Steemit.
I wouldn’t post fiction here, and that’s fine. This is more of a crypto space anyway. And that’s okay. In fact, I like it.
The price of STEEM, over the past two years, has followed the trajectory like other altcoins: down. In a single direction.
I should have sold every STEEM earned on that platform, as it lost its value everyday.
Instead, Publish0x awards users in three different coins, two of which I think are great! BAT is awrsome and DAI? DAI is probably in my top 10 of cryptos with actual value to it.
So all in all, I really prefer this place and don't know why I didn't come by sooner.
What about you? Did you also use Steemit? Or another platform? How does it compare to Publish0x?
