Quote from: suchmoon on August 03, 2016, 12:32:46 PM

Quote from: smooth on August 03, 2016, 07:44:18 AM

Quote from: suchmoon on August 01, 2016, 10:46:09 PM

My understanding is that the "authors" get paid for "upvotes", so yes, the users have to be signed in and click some button or something. New users get some free upvotes but apparently the idea is that eventually they'll need to pay (once the premine runs out?).

Nobody ever has to pay, at least not for many years when the business model could change. The upvotes don't "run out" (they do recharge if depleted by overuse over five days, at no cost).

Steemit is a blogging and discussion platform. The there are certainly low quality links to crap, and those should be evaluated on substance (or lack thereof), but most of the links are just links to people's biog posts or discussion, the same as medium, reddit, etc.

So the money is produced out of thin air?

It's basically mining. (Yes you can "mine" a little by self-voting but it is much less efficient than if others vote for you.)

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or random noobs begging for upvotes on their reddit posts. Must have something to do with the financial incentive.

People begging for upvotes is spammish and should be treated as such. That's not at all the same thing as posting a link to an article.

Quote from: suchmoon on August 03, 2016, 12:32:46 PM

Wasn't it promoted as "no premine" but the developers somehow ended up owning most of the coin supply?

You can go read the thread yourself. They told everyone right up front they were going to mine it very aggressively in order to try to obtain 80% of the initial supply (there is no fixed supply; it inflationary) and then use those coins according to a specific business plan. Literally speaking there was no premine, as anyone else could start mining the same time they did. There was even a relaunch with 24 hours notice or something, giving everyone a second chance to starting mining at the same time they did. (Personally I thought it was scammy for them to promote it as "no premine" under the circumstances of their efforts to obtain most of the supply, but as I said, literally that was and is accurate.)

That's kind of irrelevant to whether people linking to blog posts or discussions should be banned.