I think it's pretty universally agreed that politics have long been a toxic topic of discussion in the United States. I'm sure many of us have seen the infographic showing how party polarization has excelled since the advent of C-SPAN and Newt Gingrich's abuse of it. I'd be willing to bet the vast majority of users here agree that something needs the change in our plurality rule single vote electoral system. But what's coming next is a lot worse.
Even with the rise of social medias for politics, most notably Twitter, people always talked about politics when they were together. You'd hear it all the time at bars, restaurants, the bowling alley, even just walking down the street. Despite how much you may hate hearing these discussions, and how other people's opinions, educated or not, may make your blood boil, they are very healthy for political discourse. People need to hear foreign ideas to weigh everything in their minds.
To come up with political opinions without hearing the other side is like trying to solve a riddle. For example, I'll give one here. A couple goes on vacation, and are found dead on top of a mountain in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. It did not burn down, there was no murderer, they were not attacked by an animal, and there were no drugs involved. The answer? Their plane crashed. Maybe you've heard it told differently before, but the idea of the riddle is that you never come up with the right answer because you don't have all of the information.
In our two party system, each side has their own facts that they sit by. One side doesn't want you to hear what the other has to say. We balance this in our social lives by hearing what our friends and neighbors have to say. However, this does not work during the social distancing we've experienced over the last few months.
While people are at home, they spend more time on Twitter. Twitter has gained nearly 15 million new daily users since the end of 2019. As Twitter is the hub for politicians such as Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden.. well, pretty much every politician, it's easy to imagine just how much politics people have taken in.
Unlike face to face conversations, medias like Twitter are toxic for civil discourse. On Twitter, you follow who you like to hear and block who makes you upset to hear. This creates what are known as echo chambers, where you only hear what you think. Echo chambers are responsible for much of the current right wing, as well as some factions of left extremism.
When you talk about politics on social media, there's nobody to give you that worried look when you say something wrong. You don't have to listen to what you don't want to listen to. As a result, people with similar ideas feed into each other. When those ideas are wrong, they are able to create more wrong ideas.
As the pandemic has ravaged the US, we've had everything from right wing extremists with guns capturing government buildings to protest mask laws, to left wing extremists (and outside extremist influences) burning and looting buildings at Black Lives Matter rallies.
While it's easy to blame the president that even the right seems less fond of now, the true culprit is echo chambers. This kind of pure vitriol that inspires violence is the result of several months of echos bouncing to the same people day after day. It's only going to continue to get worse as the case count rises once more.
I gave your account a 10 HP delegation so that you can write posts. Hiveblocks shows that you now have 10 HP.
https://hiveblocks.com/@ildigrub
The page says you have resources to write 9 comments in a 5 day period. A comment consumes as much resources as a post. An edit consumes as much resources as a post.
Go to the upvote calculator and type in 10. It shows that the value of your 10 HP upvote is $0.0001 (a hundredth of a penny).
Your best bet for launching your account is to write a post with the tag #introduceyourself . The post should have a few pictures and say something about your interests and what you want to do on HIVE. You can have five tags per post.
Welcome to HIVE. HIVE is a bit different from other social media platforms in that it is built around a blockchain and cryptocurrency.
The site HiveBlocks.com shows your activity on the blockchain. Here is your page:
https://hiveblocks.com/@ildigrub
The page shows that you have no HIVE POWER. This is a big problem for new accounts because people need HIVE POWER for their account to work. The yellow bar indicates that you only have enough HP in your account to make 2 posts every 5 days.
The site is built around a cryptocurrency called HIVE. The rewards for posts come from inflation on the total amount of HIVE. The value of upvotes is determined by the HIVE POWER of an account. The upvote calculator shows the value of an upvote for a given amount of HP. I have 2600 HP, so my vote is worth $0.026 .
It takes about $250.00 in HP for an upvote to be worth a penny.
The voting works as follows. Each upvote consumes 2% of one's voting power. Voting power regenerates at 20% a day. That means a person gets 10 upvotes a day.
The ten upvotes by the $250.00 account distributes $0.10 per day. It the account upvotes 10 times every day, the total is $36.50 . So that is a good inflation rate.
As for your post, the destruction of discourse started a long time ago. Discourse is dependent on teaching people basic logic. The progressive school systems pulled logic out of the curriculum over a hundred years.
I find it funny that you trace the decline in discourse to Newt Gingrich as he was actually better at engaging in discourse than the current breed of politician.
I had been hoping that the rewards pools would fuel better discourse on HIVE. Unfortunately what happens is that people only want to converse with those who have invested in HIVE POWER. New users have a tough time on the platform.
Have a fun time on HIVE.
Welcome to Hive 😀
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FYI: The downvote is for preventing abuse of the rewards pool. It is not about indicating approval or disapproval of a post. The downvote is used primarily for spam, plagiarism, identity theft and fraud.
The downvote is perceived by the system as a sign a person is committing fraud. A person with a lot of downvotes receives a red letter by their name.
I see you downvoted someone in disagreement with their post. They gave you a retaliatory downvote.
Since the downvote was designed to prevent fraud, it actually takes money from an account. The site esteem.app shows the rewards for the post above.
So, you downvoted a comment on another thread. You essentially accused this person of fraud. So, he gave you a retaliatory downvote. He has HIVE POWER, you don't.
My upvote gave you $0.022 . His downvote removed $0.015 from the reward. You most likely will not get a payout for the post.
BTW, it is best not to upvote your own posts. Your upvote, with 10 HP, is worth only 0.001 . Various systems analyze posters and people who engage in excessive self voting end up with a negative reputation.
The user I downvoted actually downvoted me first. I also did not downvote in disapproval, the user used communication that was not community friendly. I was not aware that downvotes are reserved for only fraud. I've learned on other socials to use downvotes on the spread of false information, vitriol, and spam, and so that was my mindset. Apologies.
Downvote wars get pretty ugly for sure. There is no right answer for this, as the person you were interacting with has a different opinion. There is no fact-checking or any censorship, so people are free to say whatever they want. The tone i agree was pretty brutal in that poster's voice. Something i've noticed here is that there is seldom any convincing of people who hold opposite belief systems.
HIVE does not do a good job educating people on down votes.
Since this is your second day, I wanted to draw your attention to the way down votes affect rewards.
Since the down vote is weighted by HIVE POWER, one needs to be attentive to the HIVE POWER involved in different accounts before down voting. You have only 10 HP. Your upvotes and downvotes are worth only $0.0001 . It is trivial. Small accounts lose.
esteem.app shows the votes calculated to a hundredth of a penny. I applaud @hivepeople for bringing the votes on your first post back above $0.02.
I think your are right that people should challenge fake news. Unfortunately, since fake news is often driven by politics, there is always a political dimension in the discussions of what is and is not fake news.
While downvoting fake news is good. Downvoting political opinion is considered taboo.
The question of how to handle fake news is interesting.
There is a large community on HIVE interested in STEM education. If I encountered an account that was getting rewards for spreading fake science, I would bring up the issue in a STEM forum. If there was consensus that an account was spreading fake science; the STEM community would have enough HP to stomp the account into dust.
Personally, I would want to build up credibility in the community before trying such a trick. The STEM community could easily stomp me into dust.
The mask issue is too complex. The data shows masks work in some instances and not in other. That means that the issue is political. Adding political opinion to a topic with mixed data is going to end poorly.
I think it is great that you want to actively improve the forum. Accounts in the plankton are in a tough situation where our rewards can be stomped out by a flame war.
BTW, did I mention that the site Hiveblocks shows all transactions related to your account?
https://hiveblocks.com/@ildigrub
Great points
I have to admit, I admire the moxy of a person who downvoted on the first day.
@iamcrazy : I see that you are a brand new account too. It is best to start with an introductory post with the tag #introduceyourself (and four other tags).
It is best to avoid political discussions until you have a feel for the way the forum works. Accounts that start with politics are assumed to be trolls.
Anyway, I am going to assume that you are sane until you prove that you are crazy. I look forward to your first post. This is your HIVE BLOCKS page:
https://hiveblocks.com/@iamcrazy
He'll get a payout since we just upvoted his first post.
Welcome to Hive and thank you for the support. Truth is on talk radio http://republicbroadcasting.org