@aggroed and @jesta - Humbly I come before you, having crossed a great ocean on behalf of my marine tribe, minnows-in-training. In truth, we are a small but vocal subculture known as plankton, or The Planktonites, but let’s not quibble.

I am delegated, on behalf of all who deeply appreciate your efforts but have never told you so, to say, “thank you.” Gratitude is a buried emotion that we often feel but have difficulty expressing because we are intensely engaged in an existential struggle to remain alive, thrive, and survive in the South Pacific, or is it the Atlantic? The Arctic?
The bathtub? The fish bowl? We are plankton, does it really matter?
Many of us are so new to Steemit that we actually had to ask the meaning of the term, “newbie,” or “noob” as some would say. One of us (okay, it’s me) was attacked immediately after registration, literally the moment the account was approved, by a scammer known as “Steemit Security” using the fake name “Ned Scott” and electronically identified as ned@steemit.com. My fellow plankton assure me that there is no such thing as “Steemit Security” and that the existence of a known scammer posing as “Steemit Security” has been documented. This scammer, it appears, has somehow appropriated my active and master/owner keys while craftily permitting use of the posting key. I did not discover this tragedy until I attempted to use the active key to add artwork to the generic profile. The active key was not recognized. The master/owner key was not recognized. Only the posting key continues to function. (This, BTW, is a true story.)

“Contact one of the witnesses,” The Planktonites advised. But in my world, a witness is someone who has been a little too observant and is now a candidate for The Witness Protection Program. Such a person is not generally expected to continue “witnessing.”

The understandable confusion and frustration destroyed my heart of goodwill towards Steemit and left me yelling and screaming about the irresponsible scam of decentralized chaos. Having enthusiastically invited a very prominent and influential YouTube channel to “come and join us” (was that really just a bit much for a mere Planktonite?), I immediately wrote to the great and mighty YouTube channel warning of my unfortunate and impossible-to-resolve lock-out issue after less than three weeks on the platform.

“Beware,” I insisted. Large investors, identified by "reputation scores" at 60 and above, receive generous payouts and weightier "influence" on the platform. Everyone below a reputation score of 60 struggles to make it work Can you imagine "investing" a great deal of time writing blogs for pennies and then suddenly being locked out of that account, having no access to your funds or its alleged "account value," and starting all over from scratch? If that is happening across the platform (don't know, can't prove, big if), someone at Steemit may have access to thousands of small account dollar values. My inaccessible account has an SBD value of $7. If 10,000 accounts like mine are "locked," what just happened to $70,000 today? What happens to 10,000 additional locked accounts tomorrow? There is no complaint-resolution process because there are no "central operations." What happens to the "lost" accounts of those who have purchased Steem with other currencies for greater "influence"? "Sorry, loser, you lose."

Still raging, I continued: Every kind of wandering scam is floating all over the platform sniffing for dollars, hacking accounts, gaining access to whatever may be found when unsophisticated users are forced to abandon account value and start over. The number of followers is completely unrelated to anything except the blogger's ego. "Followers" may be even less likely than YouTube subscribers to interact with the channel creator or with one another. A number of accounts may be created by a single person or several accounts may be created by bots. Bots also vote on content, thus diluting the value of a vote and depriving blog content and "reputation scores" of any intelligent meaning. But the most critical issue ("which I intend to report to the police," I insisted) is that some bots are following hundreds of thousands of “accounts” and post only photos of East Asian children from Thailand and The Philippines. The children are under the age of 10, usually under the age of 5, and just happen to live in the child trafficking center of the world. Who "approved" these accounts? Is Steemit a legitimate platform? Is Steemit a legitimate platform which has been compromised and subverted by a computerized child trafficking network? Every ocean has dolphins and sharks. Swim at your own risk.

After writing this letter, I had a migraine headache and had to lie down. And while in the prone position with YouTube on Autoplay, I heard the voices of @aggroed and @jesta having a pleasant conversation about platform software development in a language that I understood. I even heard a sentence that made perfect sense. “I’m a developer, I don’t understand money,” said @Jesta. “Money is something that if I have enough of it, I don’t have to think about it.”

“Omigod! A member of the tribe has been elected president! Uncork the champagne!”

But before I could take the first sip of Armand de Brignac Brut Rose, the Planktonites pushed me out into the big wide waters and commanded me to swim over immediately and thank the conscientious developers and witnesses who are trying to repair the race car during the Indy 500. We’ll get there, with a little patience.