Amplification in Action: A Working Prototype of Reblog with Comments for Steem

Last week, I wrote the post, Who gets the gold? Why Steem needs amplifiers, not just bloggers, and it got me thinking.

Q: What is the single best thing Steem's developers can do to help authors of valuable content succeed on Steem?

A: (IMO) Create new mechanisms that start to establish a content amplification ecosystem.

The obvious first mechanism that occurred to me was "reblog with comments" combined with reward sharing. So, I fired up Cline, and we got to work on plugging a proof of concept into the Steem Curation Extension. And Cline (running deepseek) made it fairly easy.

In this post, I'm going to describe why I think that "reblog with comments (and reward sharing)" is far better than resteem for the Steem ecosystem. It boils down to a few simple points.

• It turns a single online conversation that dies in seven days into multiple online conversations that could last far longer.
• It incentivizes content discovery and distribution more than resteem, which helps content creators build audiences.
• It incentivizes creation of attractive content because a valuable post can trigger multiple reward streams and collect rewards well beyond its seven-day payout window.
• It creates a new role in the ecosystem, where someone can collect rewards for amplifying the visibility of a valuable post.

What does it look like

So, before I say more about the "why", let's talk about the "what".

Here are some examples from my testing to show what the reblogged posts look like after they land on the blockchain:

• Reblog: Pleistocene Park, Part 2: note that the original post is almost 10 years old, and suddenly generating new rewards for the author.
• Reblog: Re: A talk with ChatGPT about Steem... or: A lot of text! / Ein Gespräch mit ChatGPT über Steem... oder: Eine Menge Text!: note that this is a reblog of a reply, not a top-level post. Replies cannot currently be resteemed.
• Reblog-reply: animalCards now has downloadable cards: this is also a reblog of a reply with an embedded image.
• Reblog-reply: animalCards now has downloadable cards: this is a reblog of the same reply, but with the embedded image excluded.

And here's what the current interface looks like.

How to launch the tool
The reblog with comments interface

To launch the interface, you just click on the little double-arrow icon on the right-hand side of the posts in the feed (and next to the "resteem" icon if you click into the post).

Once launched, you just enter your comments, make edits to the title and tags - if desired, look over the post preview, and click the "REBLOG" button. Easy-peasy. It defaults to setting a 50% beneficiary reward, but that can be changed to 25%, 75% or 100% for the original post's author. There's also a toggle to exclude the image, if desired.

The browser extension uses Steem Keychain to validate the transaction and then creates a new post with a link to the original and the appropriate beneficiary settings.

Nothing here is technically new, since anyone can already do this manually. The tool just makes it easy and sets sensible defaults.

The idea is to create incentives that encourage content discovery and (ideally) make something resembling viral content possible here. And that brings us to the "why".

Turn a single conversation into many conversations

With the "resteem" function, no matter how many people resteem a post, the conversation around it all happens on the original post. One single conversation that typically (always?) comes to a conclusion around the time that the post's payout window closes, or even earlier.

In contrast, "reblog with comments" means that there can be conversations in many feeds, and they can launch again and continue long after the original post pays out.

Incentivize content discovery and distribution

By setting up beneficiary rewards for both the person sharing the content and the original creator, some people can function as promoters - spending most of their time discovering content and a little time writing about the things that they discover.

This is a model that has been battle-tested for years on X (Twitter), and despite its challenges, it continues to grow. It seems like it could take hold here, too, if Steem's developers build the right implementations.

There's an obvious concern about abuse since the reblog with comments is prone to be low-effort, but I don't see that a tool like this increases the incentive for abuse, since it involves reward-sharing. A reward-farmer can already post spam without giving up any beneficiary rewards.

Incentivize creation of attractive content with multiple reward streams that outlive the original post's payout window.

This is basically the same as the first point, but we're talking about rewards instead of conversations. Conversations improve the overall health of the online community, but here we're talking about incentives for authors to create the content that launches the conversations.

Instead of getting rewarded once after seven days, a creator of content that attracts attention can get numerous reward streams that can continue for as long as the post continues to generate attention.

It is true that these reward streams are all coming from the same reward pool. It's not new rewards for the ecosystem. However, by redirecting rewards to the creators of valuable content, it should enhance Steem's overall value as a participant in the attention economy.

Create a new role for "amplification" within the ecosystem

X (Twitter) has any number of accounts who build a following by finding and distributing attention-getting content. Until now, Steem doesn't really have an effective ecosystem for this purpose. The reblog with comment mechanism creates an incentive system where one can emerge.

There is some question about how much of X monetization should go to these distribution accounts and how much should go to the original creator, but there is little doubt that the distributors provide a service for the creators by expanding their audiences.

Similarly, I expect that experimentation will be necessary to determine how much of the reward stream should go to content creators vs. rebloggers, but overall I see the roles as symbiotic.

Bonus points

I didn't intend for this to happen, but luck would have it that "reblog with comment" also works on comment/reply posts, not just top-level posts. So, right now, I believe that this is the only way to boost visibility to the insightful comments that appear downthread in a conversation.

Wrap-up

Questions for the reader. Have you ever resteemed a post and wished you could add a little note about why you were sharing it? Have you ever come across a comment in a Steem thread and wished that more people could see it? Have you ever thought about writing a response post answering/extending someone's post and just not done it because it required too much effort?

These are the types of problems that "reblog with comment" might help to solve.

So, what are your thoughts, is this a capability that Steem's developers should expand in their future work?