Hi, my name is @andrarchy, I'm part of Team Steemit and you can AMA :). This comment was originally intended as a response to aaron-lebo, but as it became quite long, I decided to post it here.

Aaron-lebo says, "They're interested in their network getting big so they can make money. There's not much nuance to it. You can spin it another way but read the thread. It's a soulless money grab, and it's disappointing because they actually have decent software."

He's right in a lot of ways and wrong in a lot of ways, but obviously I'm biased :). Regardless of whether we agree or disagree I want to thank anyone who even gives a moment's thought to what we're trying to do at Steemit. So thank you @aaron-lebo.

What's right:

We have decent software. Well, when it comes to offering a free social network that rewards tens of thousands of ordinary people all over the world for their content in a cryptocurrency that can be traded on exchanges and cashed out for fiat currencies, we're the only game in town, so I think we have a pretty strong argument that we have the BEST software. And knowing our engineers I have no problem saying they are the most intelligent, diligent, thoughtful, nice, and hard working people I have ever had the distinct pleasure of working with. IMO they're the best in the world and welcome proof to the contrary.

One common criticism (not made by this commenter) is that most people "don't make a lot." First off I want to highlight exactly what this criticism is saying: some people on steemit make a lot. A lot of other people make a bit. A lot of people make not a lot. This is all true. But these types of comments invariably dismiss the difference that making $5 or $10 on a post (which MANY people DO make) can have on a person's life especially in many of the countries where our users are from like those in Africa, Indonesia, and more. But even with respect to more wealthy nations, I often find the critiques of how much our users make to be remarkably tone deaf. It is certainly true that not everyone can make tons of money on Steemit and you will never see anyone on the team saying anything to that effect. Steemit is definitely NOT a get rich quick scheme. It's only true that you CAN make money on Steemit and people do every single day. That's right, the Steem blockchain distributes thousands of dollars worth of STEEM every single day to users. In fact, ALL of the money created by the Steem blockchain goes to users who provide some service to it whether it's posting articles, comments, curating content, or running a node. Like every other major cryptocurrency/blockchain protocol, the fact that anyone is free to participate in it is part of what makes it anti-fragile. None of that Steem goes to the team, unless of course we do one of those things. I understand the content that is currently on the site might not appeal to many, but the amount of rewards are real (no one denies that) and who is receiving them changes every day. What I recommend is that people view the lack of diversity of content on the site as an opportunity to contribute something new to the platform. That's certainly how I looked at it when I started as a contributer on the platform and worked my way up by creating videos that helped explain the tech to the many lay-people on the platform. Eventually my videos got the attention of the people at Steemit and I was brought on board! That being said, we are still a small social network, so of course our content is not going to be able to match the bigger players. But if people want to look at the data for themselves, project our growth rate, and estimate when we will reach such scale they are welcome to. All the data is on the blockchain which is an open, public and decentralized database.

What's wrong:

We're not soulless. I swear we have souls! :) There are more than 30 people on the team at this point and statistically speaking it's just highly unlikely that we could ALL be lacking in what is typically described as a near human-universal. Unless, of course, you don't believe in souls in which case, yes, this statement is technically true. What I would say is that those in the cryptocurrency sector are often critiqued as being TOO ideological. We all openly advocate for decentralization for the purpose of spreading power (and money) among the people. That's certainly why I got involved in the field and have been blogging and vlogging on the topic for over a year, all of which is immutably preserved on the blockchain for your investigation ;). At Steemit we do want to make steemit.com as big as possible because we all have Steem, but so do all of our users. So, yes, they do too. But to claim that anything else should be the case is like saying that Facebook is better because ONLY Facebook shareholders benefit when Facebook grows. The idea that we are somehow more soulless than Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other social network that wants to grow because their model depends on eyeballs to sell ads to (notice any ads on steemit.com?) is pretty laughable. Yes, we have figured out a sustainable and scaleable way to align the incentives of the creators, developers, and users of an open, public, anonymous, censorship-resistant, and decentralized database protocol so that when it grows everyone benefits. We're not sorry :)

One of the most frequent errors people make (and this is 100% understandable) is that for us it's ALL about growing steemit.com. This couldn't be more wrong. We are interested in growing use of the Steem blockchain protocol (just like the creators of Linux wanted to increase use of their protocol) and the demand for Steem. I'm not saying it's not selfish, I'm just saying it's not accurate ;). But let me be absolutely clear and I will happily hold myself accountable for this claim for all of time: this is because I believe that the Steem blockchain is a force for good. It is an open and decentralized database which is not controlled by any single person, corporation, or government, that anyone can acquire a stake in, that is free to use, that is anonymous, and that is censorship resistant. We see a lot of problems with existing social media solutions (like all of your personal information being held and profited off of by a private company with tight links to authorities) and we sincerely believe we have solved them with Steem. One can argue whether we are right, but I know our beliefs are sincere.

PROOF: Smart Media Tokens

That's exactly why we launched Smart Media Tokens. It was always our desire to get developers to leverage Steem to create their own applications that would reward their users with money while enabling them to retain control over their personal identities and protecting them from censorship, but through conversations with entrepreneurs and developers we learned that there were additional features they wanted. While steemit.com is incredibly important to us and the number of engineers we have working on that site is now greater than ever, we decided to also commit significant resources to designing the Smart Media Tokens protocol precisely because we want to encourage other platforms to leverage our technology. If all we cared about was steemit.com this strategy would make no sense. Once Smart Media Tokens launch, any site (including this one wink wiiiiiiiiiiiiink) will be able to launch their own Steem-like token with; customized parameters, the ability to allocate founders tokens, the ability to raise capital, and more. Shameless plug over ;).

Yes, the system is designed to increase demand for Steem and that will benefit all current Steem holders, including the thousands of people doing the massively valuable work of contributing content to our platform while it is still growing. We are not idealists, but we're not soulless either. We are ambitious and hopeful technologists who are leveraging a revolutionary technology to disrupt a massively centralized, exploitative, and corrupt landscape. You're welcome ;)

If you'd like to learn more, check out this video of yours truly explaining how it all works: https://youtu.be/z-V6HnfbGUA

Regardless of your view of steemit, if you've gotten this far, you're amazing. Thanks for reading!